


The Hindsight Principle

by Wynele



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: #PickUpLucifer, #savelucifer, Character Death, Eventual Smut, F/M, Major Character Injury, No Apricots were harmed in the writing of this story, Pierce really likes rocks, Sexy Toast, Smut, Spoilers for all seasons, Stalking, Voyeurism, wing porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-05-14 09:29:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14766984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wynele/pseuds/Wynele
Summary: Those who don't learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them, over and over and over again.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a smutty one-shot that sort of got away from me. I decided to break it up into chapters for easier reading. Good news is that it's pretty much done. Bad news is I've neglected my other works for this one. hah

He revived an hour before the funeral.

Annoying, cramped, and not the first time he’d crawled out of a casket over the centuries. Nor would it be the last. His death, or perhaps was it, rebirth at Lucifer’s hands had seen to that.

Whether it was a curse or a boon, he couldn’t quite say, but attempting to murder the Light bringer had earned him back his mark. He could feel it beneath his suit jacket, writing and twisting, as if it wanted free of his flesh.

Clutching at his arm, he kneaded into the flesh of his bicep and caught his reflection in the varnished lid of the casket. Someone had dressed him in a dark blue suit, a bit old fashioned for the current trend, and combed a part in his hair.

“Chloe,” he whispered, hope filling the tatters in his soul. Who else would’ve cared enough to bury him?

The smile creeping across his features faltered, hardening into cold, firm limes. Chloe had never loved him, not truly, not as much as she loved the devil. It was a mistake he made, an underestimation of her feelings.

He had thought that if he had her body, her heart would soon follow. Bedding her had been easy. Something that perhaps should’ve tipped him off that her feelings were a bit less than sincere. All it took was a little guilt over a silly necklace, and he was inside her.

The devil’s cluelessness about people and human nature merely sped things along. Chloe Decker didn’t do casual sex, so it had been easy enough to manipulate her into believing that it had been her idea.

He had believed that Lucifer had squandered his chance. Not in an emotional sense. In that respect, Espinoza had been right. Chloe and Lucifer were a package deal, one that was not easily severed. Lucifer loved Chloe, as much a creature such as he could love, but more importantly, he respected her. And that was just the beginning of the problem.

If he hadn’t, if he had simply fucked her when she arrived on his doorstep, drunk and willing, all those months ago, no one else would’ve had the chance.

The door creaked open behind him, and he froze, scowling at his reflection on the casket. With mock reverence, he laid his hand on the lid and bowed his head. Hopefully, whoever it was would mistake him for someone paying their respects.

“Hey, boss.”

Pierce closed his eyes and exhaled before squaring his shoulders. He tilted his head just enough to see a smaller man walk up to stand beside him. It was a member of his crew. One charge specifically with retrieving him should it take him longer than normal to revive. “About time.”

“A lot of heat going down,” the man explained, sticking his hands in his pockets, and gave the casket a curt nod. “And when you didn’t pop up right away, well…”

Pierce took a breath through his nostrils, trying to sense where his soul might have been during the time it took him to revive. There was nothing, as usual. If he had been in heaven or hell, he could not recall.

He crossed his arms over his chest, the suit straining over his shoulder blades. It was cut for a smaller, or at least, less muscular person. “Give me a rundown.”

The man grimaced, rocking back on his heels, and glanced briefly skyward. “Decker and Espinoza are both suspended pending an investigation. Lopez too.”

Pierce nodded slowly to himself, digesting the bits of information. He had left enough incriminating evidence in his office that Chloe would be lucky to keep her badge. It was insurance if things went sideways, and payback for breaking his heart.

He reached out and brushed the lid of the casket, frowning at the dust that had gathered there. “And Lucifer?”

“Tearing the fuck out of anyone dumb enough to still be hanging around,” the man said almost flippantly and pulled a small reddish-brown rock from his pocket. “So, we probably shouldn’t”

He laid the rock on the casket and began edging toward the door. “I’m Jasper, by the way.”

Pierce nodded and reached out, his fingertips just brushing the smooth surface of the rock. It was a Mexican agate, remarkably similar to the one Chloe had given him right after he proposed. It was supposed to symbolize their beginning, but instead, it prophesized their ending.

They were supposed to grow old together and have a half dozen little “Pecker” babies as Ella called them. More importantly, Charlotte Richards wasn’t supposed to die. And she wouldn’t have had Lucifer not been Chloe’s everything.

“Coming, boss?”

He scooped up the rock without a second thought, disturbing the thick layer of dust that had gathered on the casket lid. His reflection stared back at him, cold-eyed and wary. His resting Pierce face as Lucifer once called it. Marcus Pierce was gone, he realized as he wiped away the last of the dust. He was no one.

He stepped back from the casket, strangely unwilling to give it his back, and slipped out the back door with Jasper.

Together they climbed into an unmarked van and slowly drove away.

“You get used to it. The dust, I mean,” Jasper said as he pulled up to a red light. “It gets everywhere, but after a while, you just don’t notice it.”

Pierce rubbed his thumb and index finger together, feeling the sooty texture on his hands. He sniffed at the air, and then brought his fingers to his nose, inhaling deeply. “It smells like ash.”

”There are some old factories up on the hill,” Jasper explained as he turned down a side street into a rundown neighborhood. “Might be where it’s coming from. Which means, it’s probably giving us cancer.”

He slowed, the van more rolling than driving until they came to a shabby white house in desperate need of painting. “Well, me, because you’re immortal.”

“I am,” Pierce said tonelessly and began to settle within himself. He could feel a plan forming within him. One that could not only secure his freedom but win back the woman he loved.

“Yup, you are,” Jasper repeated, almost if he were humoring his charge, and then climbed out of the van. Leaning up against the door, he pulled out a cigarette and fumbled with his lighter, subtlety surveying the area. After a moment, he took a long drag and nodded with his chin for Pierce to follow.

“We’ll be here for a couple days, so get comfy,” he said as they walked up to the front door of the house. “Lucifer figured out your contingency plan, and uh… Like I said, it’s been nasty. It’ll take a bit to regroup.”

Pierce paused, catching Jasper by the elbow. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something felt off. Several something if he were honest. Such as how Jasper knew when he would revive. But they all seemed trivial compared to the matter nagging at his heart.

“Who paid for the funeral?”

Jasper grinned at him, the cigarette glowing between his clenched teeth. “Ella Lopez,” he said, his keys jiggling as he unlocked the door. “Seems you were fucking the wrong girl, boss.”

 

\--------

Lucifer once told him that time passed differently for an immortal. What the devil meant, or perhaps simply didn’t understand, was that the passage of time was a matter of perspective. Angels had minds, hearts, and bodies designed for eternity. Unlike humans, angels hadn’t been designed to die.

They never grew bored with life. They couldn’t, it was utterly outside their nature. Even Lucifer, who denied his angelic nature with every breath, lived his life with his eyes wide to the world. But he had only been here five years—long enough to be infected by humanity, but not utterly change. Even so, Lucifer would never grow bored with life or tire of hunting him.

He’d never feel the boredom Pierce felt now.  As promised, Jasper moved them to a new safehouse located within a warehouse on the far end of town. Safe, secure, and just outside Lucifer’s orbit, it was the ideal place to regroup.

Ideal, if not exactly comfortable. The ashy dust from across seemed to follow them, clinging to every surface. Weeks of the stuff had all but convinced him that Jasper was generating it himself.

Jasper laughed, but then he seemed to laugh at everything and shook his head, a near constant cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“Ashes to Ashes, boss,” he had said, taking a long drag. “Except for you, I guess.”

Except for him, but it had been him, if only for a too moment.  He pulled the rock from his pocket and rolled it absentmindedly between his fingers.

He enjoyed the weight of it against his palm. It reminded him of the way Chloe would slip her hand in his, her eyes shining as they shared an unspoken understanding. He wouldn’t be difficult or challenging, or even particularly worth the effort. He would be convenient, telling her only what she wanted to hear. And he did, willing, manipulating her to falling for him, only to fall for her instead.  

Memories of their first night together floated across his senses. Her legs wrapped around his waist as he slipped into her body, whispering sweet little lies into her flesh. He rode her hard, but kissed her tenderly, his thrusts lifting her from the bed.

Pierce smirked to himself, shifting in his chair, as he pictured her head thrown back with her climax. If nothing else, Chloe Decker had been a good lay.

Somewhere from within the warehouse, a door creaked, startling him from his thoughts. He reached for the gun tapped beneath the desk just as Jasper swept into the room.

“Hey, boss,” Jasper chirped, utterly unaware of close he had been to being shot. “I got good news and same news.”

He tossed a heavy file folder onto the desk, sending swirls of dust into the air like ash. Eyes darting around the room, he grabbed a nearby chair and flipped it around so that he could straddle it.

“What you want first?” 

Pierce stared hard Jasper, trying once more to read the man. Over the last few weeks, Jasper had been his constant companion and only link to the outside world. He was also a bit too convenient, a loose end that would have to be eliminated shortly.

“Good.”

Jasper leaned forward, pressing his chin against the back of the chair. “Detective Decker has been suspended indefinitely.”

Pierce frowned, feeling a strange pang of regret. If Chloe was suspended, then the precinct had just lost their best detective and there was one less person that could track him down. He flipped open the folder and pulled out the latest intel from his people still within the LAPD.

Officially, Chloe was on paid leave pending an investigation. Unofficially, she was being raked over the coals. He scowled and stared blankly out the window, wondering if he, at all, should feel guilty. Her involvement with a criminal mastermind, the boogie man of the underworld, had prompted the investigation. The evidence he planted implicated her in his web of corruption, leaving her in a situation where not knowing his true identity was as damning as it was exonerating. “What about Lucifer?”

“After Internal Affairs ran Decker through the ringer, he doesn’t much use for the LAPD.” Jasper yawned and gave the top of his head a lazy scratch. “He occasionally helps out Espinoza, but for the most part he’s done.”

Pierce settled back into his chair, holding the stone at eye level as he rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. “He’ll be harder to kill without Decker around.”

“Actually, they’re pretty much joined at the hip these days,” Jasper said, suggestively poking the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “But, I’m not sure why you’d bother, though. As far as he’s concerned you’re stuck in a hell loop for all eternity.”

A shiver ran down Pierce’s spine as his mark began to writhe and curl against his skin, stinging like a thousand insects.

“No,” he snapped, a bit too defensive, and yanked at the sleeve of his t-shirt to cover his mark. The writhing stopped, not entirely, but enough that it could be ignored. “But I will be if he ever catches me.”

“Me too, I guess,” Jasper said with a small roll of his shoulders, but then seemed to consider. “Then again, you’re looking at a dude who’s binged watched all the Twilight movies—twice. So, it might be kind of fun.”

“One way to find out,” Pierce said coldly and caught the rock between two fingers. He stared hard at the other man, something suddenly occurring to him. “Why weren’t you at the loft?”

“I’m not one of your head busters,” Jasper said with a shrug and reached forward to pull a manila envelope from the folder. He waved the envelope in the air, inches from Pierce’s nose, and dropped it on the desk. “I mostly work intel.”

Pierce grumbled, not entirely satisfied, but willing to let it pass for now. He tore open the envelope to find a passport and a wallet containing identification, credit cards, and several thousand dollars in cash.

“And,” Jasper drew out, squishing his face together in embarrassment. “I’m also in charge of your exit strategy. Say the word and I can get you anywhere.”

Pierce stared hard at the passport, the new him staring back at him, and the casually tossed it in the trashcan. “Even without the LAPD, Lucifer will eventually find me.”

“Well, if you want to get gnawed on again by the devil, I won’t stop you.” Jasper shrugged and rose from the chair, flipping it back around. “You’ve already paid me for my time.”

With that, Jasper swept from the room, leaving a swirl of dust in his wake. Pierce leaned sideways and retrieved the passport from the trashcan. It had been stamped several times, suggesting that the new him was well-traveled.

He tapped it against his chin, weighing his options. It was possible that he could evade Lucifer, possibly indefinitely. But that would mean an eternity of always looking over his shoulder. The slightest misstep would bring the devil directly to his door.

No, he had to kill or find some way to drive Lucifer from earth. Perhaps with Lucifer gone, he could rekindle things with Chloe. He would still have to answer for Charlotte Richard’s death, but he was a master of spinning things to his favor.

All he needed was time, something he now had in abundance.


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was supposed to be smut in this chapter, but I kind of got carried away. Also, French Toast is an abomination. True Fact:)

As a concept, reinventing himself had never been difficult. The lives he lived, the lies he told, were merely skins to be shed.

Once he met a pagan woman and danced with her beneath the light of the moon. She gave him a child soon after, a beautiful girl with eyes the color of the sky during a summer storm. They were his mother’s eyes.

The girl had been healthy and clever and took joy in the smallest of things. She would accompany him while he was hunting, collecting rocks from a nearby stream. Hundreds upon hundreds of rocks, and she gave each of them a name.

He took one of them with him, a jasper the size of one of her tiny fist, when he abandoned her. It had been winter after a particularly bad harvest. He never entertained the possibility that she might survive.

He only realized his shortsightedness centuries later when, quite by chance, he ran into a young man with those same eyes. His daughter had not only survived but thrived, producing a traceable bloodline.

She was a loose end, now centuries beyond his reach, and tangible proof of his existence. Not his existence, he never denied he existed. Rather loose ends, like the child, were a constant threat to whatever new life he crafted for himself.

Reinventing himself was more building a puzzle with pieces he found and shaped rather than creating an illusion. Missing persons, soldiers killed in the line of duty, these were all puzzles he could build upon. That is, assuming, he controlled all the pieces.

A loose end, such as his long-dead daughter, were pieces that could crop up at any moment and upend the board. After so many centuries, his daughter was of little threat to him. Not like the two he spied on this morning.

Just across the street and completely unaware of his presence, Chloe and Lucifer were having breakfast together at a little outdoor café. If he strained he just barely make out Chloe’s gentle teasing and Lucifer’s cluelessness at her obvious flirting.

He ached a little at the sight of her. Despite everything, he still loved her. He would always love her. She had made him realize that life was worth living.

With his mark restored, he had nothing left but life. An endless life that he was determined to live to the fullest. Which meant there could be no loose ends. No children with storm-colored eyes and no devil showing up at his doorstep.

Loose ends had to be tied off carefully, lest they create others. So, for now, he would watch and wait, trying his best not to rage as Chloe gazed at Lucifer from beneath her long lashes. Had she ever looked at him in such a way?

\--------

Chloe settled back in her chair, elbows on both armrests, and took a sip of her coffee. She rolled her eyes and smirked, trying not to giggle at Lucifer who eyed his breakfast with all this disdain of a discerning six-year-old.

“Eat your toast, Lucifer”

Lucifer gave her a little half-hearted glare and chased a raspberry across his plate with a fork. “It’s not toast,” he grumbled, holding up a piece of the offending bread for her to inspect. “It’s stale soggy bread doused in sugar and then drowned in syrup. It’s an abomination.”

“It’s _French_ toast, Lucifer,” she replied in the same tone she used when Trixie refused to eat her greens. Without an ounce of pity, she eyed the devil as he lifted his fork to his lips.

He sniffed at the offending toast, wrinkling his nose, and took a tentative bite.  He swallowed hard, his features twisting into a freakishly close approximation of Trixie’s “You just poisoned me and now I’m going to die,” face before pushing the plate away with one finger.

“There is nothing French about that.”

Chloe’s mouth twisted, lips pressed together in an effort not to grin, as she goggled at him with widened eyes. “You’re like a thousand years old and you’ve never…” A look of realization came over her face and she sighed, rolling up her eyes up to the white umbrella shielding them from the morning sun. “You thought it was sexy toast.”

“I’m several million years old, actually,” Lucifer said with all the petulance he could muster and poured himself another glass of juice. “And I was expecting a sexy doily at the very least.”

Chloe quirked her lips, narrowing her eyes, and took another sip of her coffee. “Of course, you were.”

Lucifer breathed an exasperated sigh and fussed with his cufflinks before gesturing to his plate. “They didn’t even cut off the crust.”

Chloe choked a little on her coffee, which thankfully now was only lukewarm, but managed to keep a straight face. “Sounds serious.”

“It is,” Lucifer said, sitting up to his full prim and proper height, and looked at her expectantly. “I may never recover.”

“Wow,” she said, taking one last sip of her coffee before setting the cup down on the table. “Want me to call the manager over?”

Lucifer fussily dabbed at the corners of his mouth before tossing the napkin on an empty plate and fussing with his cufflinks. “Could you?”

“Yes,” she hummed, smiling at him from beneath her lashes, and flicked a strawberry from her plate to his. “Because I want to be kicked out of another restaurant this week.”

Lucifer gasped in mock offense and laid a hand on his chest. “Detective, I would never…” His mouth clamped shut into a tight quivering line and he looked away, grinding his teeth. “Chloe, I…”

“Hey,” Chloe soothed as she reached across the table to take his hand. “It’s not your fault.”

Lucifer stared for a long moment across the street to where Pierce hid in the shadows. If he saw the other man, he gave no indication. Finally, he looked back at Chloe, his expression softening as he linked their fingers together.

“I didn’t help matters.” He ran his thumb along the inside of her wrist, and then looked up at her with wide, imploring eyes. “Let me do something.”

Smiling tightly, Chloe shook her head and brought his hand to her lips. She pressed a feather-light kiss to his pulse point, and then another on his knuckles before laying his hand back on the table.

He caught her fingertips as she pulled away, giving them one final squeeze before releasing her.

“It’s not up to you to fix my life.”

She pressed her lips together in a polite, but tight smile as their waiter returned. They stared at each other from across the table as the waiter freshened their coffee and brought them a second juice carafe.

“Ella and Dan have already been reinstated,” she reminded when the waiter had moved on to another table. “It won’t be long until I am too.”

Exhaling through his nostrils, Lucifer stared hard at the closed bookstore next door to the café. Chloe blew on her steaming coffee before taking a sip, allowing him to calm down on his own.

After a moment, he returned his attention back to Chloe, punctuating his words with jabs of his fork. “Lieutenant Wyatt—”

“She’s just doing her job, Lucifer,” she said, taking his hand again, and gave him her best no-nonsense stare. “I agree with her decision. And if it were anyone else, you would too.”

Lucifer frowned, obviously not convinced, and pulled his hand away. “If anyone should be punished, it’s me. I’m the one who—”

“Hey, knock it off,” Chloe hissed and leaned forward until she was almost nose to nose with him. “You’re not the cause of all my problems.”

“No.”

Chloe pushed herself up on her elbows so that she could press a kiss to the end of his nose, and then fell back into her chair. The tension left her body, leaving her relaxed and happy. “Besides, I’m enjoying the time off.”

His expression turned icy as it often did when someone lied so obviously to his face.

Chloe sighed and shook her head, her features becoming stern and unwavering.

“I started a relationship with Pierce, knowing he was my boss.” Her steely expression faltered just slightly crumbling with the slight quiver in her voice, but she pressed on unapologetic and decisive. “And then there’s Dan.”

“Daniel’s transgressions are not—”

Chloe lifted a hand, silencing him, and gave him a watery smile. “I’ve been involved with two corrupt cops in less than two years.” She sucked in a breath, and then released it, sending her bangs fluttering around her face. “I’m very lucky all I got was a suspension.”

She looked at him pleadingly, willing him to understand, and grabbed his index finger. “I know you want to help and that’s really endearing.” Her eyes sparkled, the glitter of tears on her lashes, but her expression was grateful. “But you have to let me own this.”

Lucifer glowered, grinding his teeth as he looked away, and then downed the rest of his juice like it was a shot of bourbon. “Very well.”

“Thank you,” she breathed, smiling brightly and nudged him with her knee.

Lucifer smiled at her, not entirely happy, and reached over to steal a strip of bacon from her plate. He shoved it into his mouth as she swatted at him, chewing with obvious glee.

“So,” she breathed, hoping to change the subject, and looked over her shoulder at the bookstore. “Tell me about the bookstore.”

Lucifer blinked at her, strangely bashful, and poured himself another glass of juice. “It’s a, uh, store that sells books?”

Chloe settled back in her chair, eyeing him up and down, smirking just slightly as he squirmed. “Uh, huh.”

“Come now, Detect—Chloe,” he purred, trying and failing to sound suave. He took another sip of his juice and gave his cuffs a tug before speaking. “I may or may not have placed a special order.”

She breathed an exasperated sigh and shook her head before taking a bite out of her last strip of bacon. “So, in other words, we’re here to pick up your porn.”

“Oh, I do like the way you think.” He gave her a sly look, grinning wide enough to show his dimples. “But no, this is better.”

Chloe leaned sideways to look at the shop. While she watched the shopkeeper flipped an old wooden sign from “closed” to “open.”  She looked back at Lucifer, shrugging her shoulders. “A signed copy of the Karma Sutra?”

“I wish.” Lucifer’s grin widened until it was almost painful. “Again, I do like the way your mind is going this morning.” Then his grin faded, and he grew very serious. “Are you familiar with the work of Bethany Blackard?”

Chloe tipped her head back, pursing her lips as she wracked her brain. “Doesn’t she write those young adult novels about angels and demons…” she gasped, realization setting in. “Is she…?”

She gaped at him with widened eyes and stuck her thumbs against her shoulders waggling her fingers. Lucifer tilted his head sideways at her, frowning. “Does she have antlers on her shoulders?”

“No, not antlers, wings,” Chloe whisper hissed, leaning in an unsuccessful attempt to keep their conversation private. “I mean, is she one of your sisters?”

Lucifer mouthed an “Oh,” and leaned back, raising his eyebrows. “Oh, goodness no, the books are atrocious. And completely inaccurate.”

He reached for the carafe, refilling their juice glasses with a flourish. “Honestly, an all demon hockey team? And Gabriel Las Vegas lounge singer? Preposterous."

“Yeah.” Chloe squinted at him, pursing her lips and nodding in mock agreement. “Completely nuts.”

“Thank you,” he beamed, missing or simply ignoring her obvious sarcasm. “Gabriel has a voice like a bucket of toads.” He sighed thoughtfully and tapped his chin with one long finger. “At any rate, book five ends on a huge cliffhanger. Raziel had just been outed as an angel to the entire school, including his love interest and mortal enemy, Zaybree.”

Chloe blinked, taking a double, then a triple take, and tried twice before speaking. “And is Raziel in the book anything like your brother?”

“Sister, actually,” he corrected, shaking his head, and grew more animated as he spoke. “And no, book Raziel doesn’t cause near enough explosions to even be remotely like my sister.”

“Explosions,” Chloe repeated with a slow, long nod. “Your sister causes explosions?”  
  
“Oh, not for ages,” Lucifer said, waving off her concern as if having an exploding sister was the most normal thing in the world. Then again, he was the devil, perhaps it was. “She would also never play a full-contact sport.”

“Right.” Chloe dithered for a moment, squinting and staring at Lucifer with one eye. She winced and then breathed out in a single breathless gasp. “Because of the explosions.”

“Exactly!” Lucifer cooed, his voice dropping down into a low, conspiratorial whisper. “I must say, you are catching on quite nicely.”

Chloe’s mouth dropped open, and she twisted her head into a little sideways nod. She blinked twice and shook her head, seeming at a loss for what to say. Then, she simply laughed softly and propped her chin up in her hands. “Dork.”

Lucifer looked mortally offended and place a hand over his heart, but his eyes sparkled. “Well, I’ll show you mine.”

“Seen it,” she quipped back, shaking her head in exasperated affection. “So, where do you want to go after we pick up your Pulitzer worthy piece of literature?”

Lucifer shrugged and refilled his poured himself another glass of orange juice. “How about Argentina?”

Chloe rolled her eyes, knowing he wasn’t completely teasing and pushed Lucifer’s plate back towards him. “Eat your sexy toast, Satan.”

\---------

 

Nearly half an hour later, Pierce watched the Chloe and Lucifer rise from their table. Standing almost close enough to touch, the pair walked to the nearby bookstore. Lucifer opened the door for Chloe, it’s bell sounding across the courtyard. Chloe paused and twisted in the doorway, an impish look crossing her face as she slipped her hand between Lucifer’s arm and the door and pinched him soundly on the bottom. Then she bolted into the shop, squeaking as he bounded after her.

Pierce seethed, gripping the rock until he almost thought his fingers would break. Chloe had never looked so happy, so carefree, so utterly in love.

Breathing heavy through his nostrils, he steadied himself before pulling the burner phone from his back pocket.

“Jasper,” he rasped, eyes cold as he stared at the happy couple within the bookstore. “Change of plans.”

 

\----To Be Continued----

 


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was released a little later than I intended. I may revamp it later, but for the moment I was simply tired of looking at it. :)

A change of plans meant a change of locations, which meant putting him dead center of Lucifer’s ever-expanding circle of influence. The devil had been snatching up properties across Los Angeles the last few months. Some were at random, seemingly unrelated, some decidedly less so.

First was Charlotte Richard’s old law firm, then it was the Pudding Barn, and, as of this morning, the apartment complex that housed his newest base of operations. It was also home to Chloe Decker, which suggested that the devil’s sudden interest in real-estate may be as personal as it was financial.

Pierce steepled his hands, rolling the rock back and forth between his palms until it was warm to the touch. His eyes flicked across the courtyard to the terrace of Chloe’s apartment. She was out again with Lucifer, giving him the opportunity to execute the next phase of his plan.

Behind him, Jasper tapped at his keyboard grunting and making small noises of approval. The man blew on his keyboard, sending motes of ashy dust into the air.

Pierce spared a sideways glance over his shoulder but kept most of his attention to the sidewalk leading to the terrace. “Well?”

Jasper sighed and shoved the headphones from his head, allowing them to dangle on his shoulders.

“Good news is Decker didn’t find the bugs you planted back when the two of you were a thing.” He tipped his head sideways, frowning at his monitor. “Bad news is the one you planted in the kitchen keeps popping the light.”

Pierce nodded, digesting the information, and ran a finger along the dusty windowsill. The real residents of the apartment were on a summer long vacation in Madrid, more than long enough for him to execute the next phase of his plan. “Sounds like a short in the wiring.”

“Yeah, probably,” Jasper said, snatching what looked to be some sort of work order from the coffee table. “Decker’s already called maintenance about it, but they couldn’t find the problem.”

Jasper made a little humming sound before silence could truly settle into the apartment, and tapped something out on his laptop.

“I wonder if this is what hell is like,” he said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “Rooms upon rooms where the residents could leave anytime they like, but they don’t because there’s free Wi-Fi.”

The man tacked on his laptop for emphasis and then shrugged. “Maybe that’s why he bought the place?”

Pierce shook his head, a trickle of sweat racing down his spine. As useful as Jasper had proven himself to be, his words sent a slight twinge of something unnamed through him. “You think it reminds him of home, huh?”

“Maybe.” Jasper pulled the headphones off and laid them beside him on the couch. “Anyway. Sound seems to be good. We won’t know for sure until she gets home.”

Pierce nodded to himself and crossed his arms over his chest. He was content for the moment, even if he wasn’t completely satisfied. “Find anything out on Wyatt?”

“Just a sec.” Jasper opened a tab on the laptop and leaned forward, squinting as he began to read. “Lieutenant Avery Wyatt.” He licked his upper lip as he began to scroll through the information. “Transferred in from Tampa.”

Pierce nodded slowly, running his tongue along his bottom row of teeth. “Which explains why none of our locals know anything about her.”

“That and Lucifer tore the fuck out of the ones stupid enough to stick around.” Jasper shrugged and pulled his lips back, revealing perfect teeth. “Just tossing that out there, boss.”

Pierce huffed just slightly, eyes narrowing to peer down the length of his nose. As usual, Jasper ignored the obvious signs of his annoyance. Either he didn’t understand, or he simply didn’t care. All his men were expendable. Jasper knew this as well as any other. Unfortunately, he also knew that at this very moment, he was far too valuable to kill.

“Noted,” he snapped and squeezed the rock with one hand. His eyes narrowed as he heard the tale-tell rumble of Lucifer’s car. The devil was close.

“She’s Internal Affairs, which means her office is across the street and not at the precinct itself.”

“Right,” Jasper said with a bob of his head. “We can see about bugging her office, but she’s good, boss.”

Pierce tipped his head back and stared up at the ceiling. A spider clung to a dusty web, repelling itself down to dangle just out of reach. “So am I.”

Jasper shrugged a little noncommittal shrug and wiped the dust off his hands with his pants leg. “I’ll gather the hardware.”

He leaned forward to scribble something on a scrap of paper and then folded it twice before sticking it into his pocket. “Not sure why you went to the trouble of implicating Decker as your accomplice, boss.”

Pierce glanced back out the window, his expression darkening at the sight of Lucifer’s corvette pulling into the parking lot. “I didn’t want her looking for me.”

“So, you tried to ruin her career, so she couldn’t,” Jasper said, nodding in appreciation. “Ruthless.”

Pierce ignored the comment. It was as patronizing now as when he heard it from Maze. “Wyatt’s investigation needs to go on as long as possible. Find whatever you need to make that happen.”

“Well,” Jasper drew out, tilting his head and wincing at his laptop. “You don’t bust this many corrupt cops without having a few enemies, so there’s that angle.”

Pierce gave the barest of nods, only half listening as Chloe climbed out of Lucifer’s car. She wore a long, floral sundress, covering her legs, but leaving her arms and shoulders enticingly bare.

He could still remember the feel of those arms around him, the softness of her breasts against his chest. She liked it a little rough, to be held down barely able to move. Tenderness came afterward. It was one of the things that made their evidence room tryst such an easy sell.

Chloe tried to take one of the bags, but Lucifer grabbed it before she could. Eyes on him, she smirked and pulled the bag from his unresisting fingers. She closed the trunk with her free hand just as the sun drifted out from behind the clouds. It shined through the thin material of her skirt, sending shadows of her long, toned legs across the sidewalk.

“I don’t want her dead,” Pierce said coldly, reaching out to wipe the dust from the window pane. “We need leverage.”

Jasper sighed and shifted on the couch, clasping his hands over his knee. “She has a kid.”

Pierce’s eyes narrowed as he watched Chloe walk ahead of Lucifer. Her long skirt swished around her ankles in time with the gentle sway of her hips. He knew that walk.

Behind him, Jasper closed his laptop and rose from his place on the sofa. He walked to the window, glancing at the couple outside, before shoving the headphones into Pierce’s hand. “So, did the two of you ever consider a threesome? You, her, the devil in the middle?”

Pierce breathed a heated breath from nostrils, ignoring the comment and its accompanied twinge of jealousy. He dismissed it as quickly as it came, banishing it to the deepest pit of his soul. Chloe Decker showed him that life was worth living, but she also showed him something far more valuable. Life was more than her. It was something unnamed and unknown Something to be reached for, clung to, so long as it stretched into eternity.

He looped the headphones around his neck. “Are we ready for that sound check?”

“Yeah, just as soon as they get inside,” Jasper said with a bob of his head and returned to his place on the couch. “Bugs are in the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and upstairs bedroom.”

Pierce nodded and pressed the headphones to one ear, straining to listen. He nodded in approval as the clack of Chloe’s keys in the terrace door sounded in his ear. “We’re good.”

“So, far.” Jasper pursued his lips and squinted at his laptop. “What we’re hearing is from the bug in the kitchen. Which might be a good sign as far as the wiring goes.”

“It’s an old building,” Pierce agreed and turned his attention back to terrace. Chloe and Lucifer had already gone inside, but he could still see them through the glass double doors.

Chloe dropped her bags at her feet and sat on the back of the couch, crossing her legs at the ankles. Eyeing Lucifer with an almost predatory stare, she drew tiny patterns with her finger on the couch cushion and watched as Lucifer retrieved a package of light bulbs.

He turned in place for a moment, searching, and then retrieved the stepladder from its place near the stove. He hopped to the first step, and then seemed to glide, rather than climb the remaining way up the ladder.

Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of Lucifer’s long, lean form stretching towards the light fixture, and licked her lips. “Don’t fall.”

He smirked at her from between his raised arms and carefully removed the glass dome covering the burnt-out bulb. “Too late.”

Carefully, he removed the dome and held between his hands if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. He looked over at her, an unspoken request in his eyes.

Her lips curled into a smile and she stared at him for a long, hungry moment. Then she pushed away from the couch and joined him in the kitchen.

“Need a hand?” she asked, purposely brushing up the leg of his trousers as she reached up to take the glass dome from him. “So, the devil does maintenance.”

He peered down at her, his eyes nearly black and smoldering. The sun drifted behind another cloud, scattering the shadows in the apartment, forming a jagged nimbus around his head.

“The devil does whatever you require,” he murmured in a low tone that suggested anything other than changing light bulbs, and then quirked a grin. “Except laundry. That’s where I draw the line.”

Chloe choked, trying not to laugh, and laid a hand on her throat where her pulse thrummed furiously. “So…”

She looked up slowly, other words on her tongue, as Lucifer unscrewed the burnt-out bulb from its socket. The words fled, and her mouth fell open as the burnt-out bulb inexplicably flared to life in his hand.

“O—kay,” she half-said and half-mouthed, “Of course my boyfriend’s magical. He’s the devil.”

“Ah, my apologies…”  Eyes narrowing at the bulb, he shook it like it were glowstick at a rave. It dimmed after a moment, but not before a strange look fell upon Lucifer’s face. “I’m your boyfriend?”

“No!” she squeaked, scrunching her face in protest, and then threw up her hands. “I don’t know, maybe?”

Lucifer shrugged, seemingly unbothered and handed her the burnt-out bulb. Chloe scrambled to take it, cradling it as if here a tiny precious thing. The glass was almost completely blackened, having absorbed energies it was never meant to, but deep within on filament she could see a tiny ember. It was the last gasp of a dying star. “Does that always happen?”

Lucifer pulled a fresh bulb from the package and screwed it neatly into its socket. He gave her sly, sideways grin as the light clicked on above his head. “I can turn anything on.”

Chloe looked up at him, eyes hard and unhappy, and then sighed shaking her head. She stepped back as he climbed down from the stool, barely looking at him as he returned it to its place near the stove.

“I had thought my father took that power from me after the rebellion,” he said as he moved to the sink to wash his hands, “but now I’m not so sure.”

Chloe walked over to him and hugged him from behind “Wow, bet your parents saved a fortune on lightbulbs.” She rubbed her cheek against his back, feeling the shift of something that shouldn’t be beneath his flesh. “I like it when you tell me things.”

He turned in the circle of her arms and bent until their foreheads touched. His lips brushed against hers, and he nipped gently at the corner of her mouth before pressing soft, tender kisses down the length of her jaw. He pressed one final kiss behind her ear before drawing back just enough to look her in the eye. “I broke your favorite coffee cup.”

She stared at him for a long moment, blinking and trying to comprehend what he had just said. “You what?”

He mumbled something against the hollow of her throat and slipped a finger beneath the strap of her sundress. She slid her hands down his back to his waist.

“I really liked that cup,” she murmured, her fingertips dancing over his belt buckle, wanting, but not quite daring. “I got it from—”

Lucifer swirled his tongue over her collarbone as he let the strap fall limp against her shoulder. He kissed her again, long and lingering, his sweeping inside her mouth. Then, he kissed and licked a scorching line to her other shoulder.

Moving of their own accord, her fingers undid his belt buckle. He made a low sound in his throat, and then dragged the other strap off her shoulder with his teeth. He drew back, seeming to admire his handiwork, and then tugged at the waist of her dress just enough to reveal the tops of her breasts.

“I’ll get you another,” Lucifer gasped, nudging his knee between hers as he gently guided her backward to the kitchen islander. Hands on either side of her, he leaned forward he pressed a kiss to the breast closest to her heart. “One of those self-stirring ones or maybe one that changes color when you fill it with hot stuff.”

His tongue slipped beneath the material of her sundress, grazing her nipple, and then pulled back as she tugged his shirt free of his waist. “I should go,” he whispered, kissing her again, and ran a hand through her hair. “Before we, before I…”

Chloe shook her head and kissed him hard, pushing him back. Standing so close she was almost on top of him, she shimmied down his body so that she was on her knees at his feet. He stared down, his pupils wide and spiraled, and tried to pull her up to her feet.

Her eyes never leaving his, she reached up, and slowly began to pull down his trousers. “Please.”

Not trusting himself to speak, he quickly bobbed his head and ran his hand down the length of her face. He rubbed his thumb against her bottom lip, and then slowly withdrew, his fingertips trailing along her cheek.

She stared up at him with wide, smoldering eyes, nipping at his fingers, and then gently traced his hipbone with her tongue. Eyes on him, she gently wrapped her fingers around him, smiling when he slightly arched his back.

She pressed kisses across his belly, swirling her tongue in his navel, and then circled her fingers around him.

He jerked slightly, thrusting his hips forward, as she massaged her thumb against his tip and slowly ran her tongue down the length of his shaft.

Sitting back on her heels, she grinned up at him like a Cheshire Cat, and swirled her tongue over his foreskin. He swallowed hard, shuddering, and tangled his hand into her hair. Wide glittering eyes stared down at her, devouring every inch of her. He looked almost feral.

Parting her lips, she gently pushed back his foreskin and applied just enough suction to draw him fully into her mouth. Lucifer cried out suddenly and threw back his head as his wings erupted from his back in a glorious white arc.

Chloe fell back on her rear, mouth open, a thin line of saliva glistening on her chin. Then, a strange look came over her face, followed by a grin, and she tackled the devil to the kitchen floor.

Lucifer made a sound, somewhere between protest and encouragement, and began pulling at the rest of his clothes. The pair wrestled on the floor, a tangle of wings and limbs, kissing and fondling each other in sudden desperate fervor. Gasping and disheveled, Lucifer finally pulled himself free and scrambled naked across the floor. He drew his wings up in defense and raised a single shaking finger. “No.”

When she reached for him, grinning, her eyes half-lidded and bleary, he scrambled back and drew his wings around him like a protective, feathery cocoon.

“No, no, NO!” he enunciated, almost desperately, as if scolding a small dog, and then tighten his wings when she reached for him again. “No.”

Baffled and slightly hurt, she pulled her sundress up over her bare breasts and hugged herself around the middle.

“Lucifer,” she coaxed, fighting the prickle of tears in her eyes, and then, taking a chance, reached out to touch the quivering wall of feathers. “Did I hurt you?”

Lucifer made a small, muffled sound, and seemed to relax. Then, after a moment, he parted his wings just enough so that he could see her with one eye. He blinked at her curiously and pursed his lips, eyeing her every reaction. “You’re not ensorcelled?”

The words were so careful, more a statement than a question, that Chloe did a double take. She blinked hard, her mouth gaping, before goggling an annoyed look skyward. “Lucifer, I planned this.”

His wings parted further, just enough so that he could stick his head out and stare at her in confusion. “You did?”

Chloe stared at him for a long moment, barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Then, very gently, she pushed open his wings, spreading them just enough so that she could slip between them and crawl into his lap.

She slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly, her hand cupping the back of his head. Her hand between them, tracing the firm planes of his belly. “Yes,” she murmured, biting back a moan  as she gently guided him into her.

His mouth went slack, a whimper escaping his lips, as his wings tightened around them like a pair of feathery arms. He assailed her throat and shoulders with kisses while tugging at her sundress to bare her breasts. He cupped them with both hands, thumbs rolling over her nipples. “I didn’t want to assume…”

He gasped suddenly, moaning low in his throat, his hips jerking of their own accord, as she clenched around him. “Chloe.”

She flung back her head, arching her spine, and balled her fists into his feathers. “Shut up.”

Mouth dry at the sight of her, Lucifer obeyed her command and found other uses for his tongue. He licked a line between her breasts, kissing and suckling at her tender flesh, while one hand slipped between them to rub semicircles where everything was warm and wet.

Chloe cried out suddenly, her moving jerkily against his, and kissed him hard on the mouth. Her eyes opened as he lowered her to the floor, kissing a path down her body. She watched, her breath coming in ragged pants as he settled back between her thighs.

He kissed her with a delicate brush of his lips and slowly began to move. She arched her back beneath him, meeting him halfway, and slid her hands to the place where his wings joined his back. They relaxed at her touch, forming a feathery canopy above them.

“Lucifer,” she gasped, loving the way the angle of his hips changed when she said his name. She hooked a leg over his hip, using the leverage to drive him harder into her.

His mouth found her breasts again and nuzzled at them before flicking his tongue over her nipples. He seemed to prefer one to the other, she mused, as he palmed one breast and suckled at the other.

Writhing as another shock of pleasure rolled through her, she grabbed the back of his head and guided his lips back to hers. He stilled between her thighs as she kissed him delicately and traced his lips with one finger.

“You okay?” she whispered, clenching just enough to make the breath catch in his throat. A fine sheen of sweat clung to her body, giving her a luminous glow.

He made a small sound, and then rocked against her, slow, but deep. “I’m fine.”

“Good.” Chloe breathed a happy sigh and kissed him hard, wrapping her legs around his waist. “Don’t be gentle.”

Lucifer stared at her for a long moment, trying to gauge her words, and then pressed a tender kiss to her lips. He laid forehead against hers and allowed his features to twist into a wide, almost painful grin, giving one last chance to change her mind. When she simply grinned back, he thrust into her again, once, twice, and then removed himself entirely.

Sitting up, he uncurled her legs from his waist and gently rolled her over onto her belly. He ran a hand down the length of her spine, one finger tracing a little circle around the scar on her shoulder. Leaning forward, he pressed a kiss to each of her shoulder blades, and then one to the small of her before slipping an arm beneath her.

He helped her up on her knees and elbows, pressing one last kiss to her spine before maneuvering behind her. Palm on her backside, he edged up to her and rubbed the tip of his erection against her before sliding home in single fluid stroke.

Chloe squeaked in approval, moving as she began to buck beneath him. His thrusts came hard and fast, filled with delicious friction. She shrieked suddenly, clenching him in a creamy caress, as he his wings beat above her.

His wings circled around them, sealing them in their own tiny world. He pulled out only to enter her once more with a stroke that somehow managed to be tender as well as hard. He slowed as his breathing grew ragged, trying not to fall from the edge of something quickly approaching.

He looped an arm around her waist and pulled her back into his lap. One hand stroking her left breast, which she had begun to realize was his favorite, while the other slipped to where their bodies joined. He stroked her lightly, almost too gently, as his mouth devoured the slender column of her throat.

Closing her eyes as she panted, she leaned back into him, enjoying the sensations rocking her body. Her hand slide down her body, hitching for a moment on her navel, before slipping into the cage of his fingers.

She began to touch him and herself, rubbing with soft circles against too heated flesh. Tipped her head back, she kissed him, nipping just slightly at the corner of his mouth.

He kissed her back hard, his tongue sweeping the inside of her mouth. She smiled hazily at the sound of his ragged breaths in her ear. Her body tightened as white spots formed before her eyes, and she shrieked something that might have been his name.

Suddenly, she was on her back again and he was hovering above her. His wings were flared behind him and his eyes were a pale golden orange. She pulled him to her without thinking, without caring, and wrapped all her limbs around him.

She cupped her back of his head, panting softly, exhausted, but at the same time energized. Lucifer made a sound that was almost a sob and lifted his head to capture her mouth. His hips slowed as his body tensed and his wings flared out wide, sending something flying from her countertop. Then, suddenly, unable to hold back any longer, he thrust hard and trembling, crying out as he came.

He collapsed on top of her, face buried in the crook of her neck, his hand on her left breast, and pressed a kiss to her collarbone.

He shifted just slightly, removing some of his weight from her, his wings relaxing to cover them both like a feathery blanket.

“You okay?” she whispered, pressing a kiss to the top of his above. Above her, the light bulb flickered, dimmed, and then went out entirely.

He looked up at her, his eyes black and hazy. “Yes.” His hand slid between them, but then pulled back when she winced. “You?”

Chloe smiled, making a content humming sound, and idly stroked at his wing. “I’d be better with a bed, some chocolate, and maybe a cabana boy.”

“A cabana boy?”

“Or whatever they call them in Argentina.” She shrugged, a grin creeping across her features, nudged him to lay beside her. “That is if you still want to go.”

Lucifer rolled beside her, and then pulled her to him, tucking her within his wing. “I do.” He kissed her temple. “What about the investigation?”

Chloe snuggled into him, fighting the urge to drift asleep. “Lieutenant Wyatt made it clear that if she needs me, she’ll contact me.”

“And your offspring?”

“Look at you being all responsible, ” she teased, and then slapped him playfully on the chest. “Trixie’s with Dan parents for the rest of the summer.”

Lucifer nosed through her hair, but said nothing, waiting for her to speak.  

Chloe twisted and propped herself up on his chest to look at him. “I feel like I’m being watched,” she explained and pressed a finger to his lips when he tried to speak. “Not literately, and I should be used to it, but Wyatt is digging deep and I…well, with the hearing still a few months away, this is as free as I’m ever going to be. So, let’s go if you want to go.”

Lucifer looked at her for a long moment before finally nodding his head. “Very well,” he said finally, with a hint of worry in his tone. “We can leave this weekend if you like.”

Then, he perked up, brightening, a wide, mischievous grin spreading across his features. “Well, in the meantime. Did you know that I heard a rumor of bed just upstairs in this very apartment?”

Chloe mock gasped, her eyes wide as she nodded her head, smiling. “I may have heard something about that. Maybe we should check it out?” She quirked her mouth at him, eyes narrowing. “Just as soon as my legs start working.”

“Oh, well, then. Allow me.” Lucifer’s wings rippled around him, and suddenly they were sprawled out together on her bed.

Eyes as wide as saucers, Chloe looked around the room, and then tackled Lucifer to the bed before he could even consider getting away.

\-------

 

In the apartment across the way, Pierce glared out the window, headphones dangling from his hands.

“Well,” Jasper chirped, cringing as he cleaned out his ear with a pinky finger. “Suppose that’s a yes on the sound check.”

Uttering a sound that was more beast than man, Pierce threw the headphones across the room, striking the far wall. “That bastard.”

Jasper winced and carefully folded his laptop, but otherwise seemed unaffected the outburst. “To be fair, boss. You’re dead and in hell.” He shrugged, seeming to consider. “Or supposed to be anyway.”

Pierce simply stared ahead, his rage a large, tangible thing. “Arrange a meeting with Wyatt,” he demanded in a voice that was more growl than words. “It’s time we step this up a bit.”

 

\----To Be Continued----


	4. Part Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There wasn't supposed to be porn in this chapter, but... I was in a smutty mood.

“…and then Lucifer leaped from the auditorium, bare ass to the wind,” Chloe read out loud, and then looked down at the man dozing with his head on her thighs. “That kind of sounds like you actually.”

Lucifer yawned and fisted his hands into the blankets, his fingers poking through the crochet throw. “Azrael and I get along much better than what the books would have you believe.”

Chloe rubbed her knuckles against his cheek, smiling when he nuzzled her hand. “So, she wouldn’t raise an undead army to keep you from being crowned homecoming king?”

He yawned and burrowed deeper into the blanket. “Raziel is the sorceress in the family.”

Chloe combed her fingers through his hair. It was still damp and curly from the shower, leaving tiny beads of water on his temple. “But in the book, she’s a guy and the school jock.”

Lucifer slid a hand under the blanket, skimming the sheets until his fingertips met the lacy wall of her panties. Slowly, he pressed at the fabric with two fingers, applying just enough pressure to make her squirm. When her legs moved together to trap his hand, he withdrew, trailing his fingertips down the inside of her thigh.

His eyes drifted shut, a breath escaping his parted lips, as he dozed. Only to be jerked awake suddenly when Chloe smacked him with the book.  “Ass.”

“Bloody hell!” he cried, rubbing his head as he blinked at her owlishly. “What was that for?”

Bookmarking her place with her finger, she crossed her arms over her chest and stared down at him without an ounce of pity. “I didn’t hit you that hard, Lucifer.”

Grumpily, he began to scoot up the bed, kneeing and elbowing his way to where she was propped up against the headboard. He jerked one of the pillows out from beneath her, balling it under his head, and then sulked at her from beneath the mop of his damp hair. “You offered to read to me.”

Chloe squinted at him, mouth pressed into a firm, annoyed line, and then laid the book down beside her on the bed. “Because you refused to go to sleep.”

“I didn’t refuse,” Lucifer grumbled and bunched up the pillow so that it balled under his chin. “I merely opted to sleep on the plane.”

“Which leaves in eight hours,” she reminded, yanking the blankets back over him. “And you gave me crap over those Class of 3001 novels.”

“I did not,” he insisted, stifling a yawn as he rubbed his cheek against the pillow. “I simply could not comprehend why you were so enamored.”

Chloe softened a little, relenting. “Guess the whole high school experience would be kind of lost on you, huh?” She scooted down in the bed until she was laying nose to nose with him. “I still can’t believe you threw me a prom.”

He kissed her softly, nibbling carefully at her lips, and slid a hand down her flank to rest on her hip. His fingers skimmed over the lace of her panties before hooking into the elastic waistband. “These are new.”

Chloe widened her eyes just slightly, fighting a smile as she slipped her hands into his robe. “Ella got them for me after our last girl’s night.”

A slow, lazy grin appeared on his features as he peeled back the blankets and slid down the bed until he was even with her hips. “Bravo, Ms. Lopez,” he purred, nuzzling the purple lace with his nose.

Carefully, he nudged her legs apart with his chin and swirled his tongue against her inner thigh. Then, he licked her center, tasting her through the fabric.

Chloe swallowed and licked her lips, her breath hitching in her throat, as he ran the pads of his fingers over the lacy pattern. “She’s dreaming of beautiful black-eyed babies that speak Klingon, like science, and call her Auntie Ella.”

She stretched, arms splayed wide, and shimmied down the bed so that she could hook one leg over his shoulder. Her eyes fluttered shut as his fingers slipped beneath the fabric and gently parted her folds.

He explored her with delicate, feathery touches, teasing her delicate flesh until she was wet and ready. His hands slid over her panties to her hips and palmed her bottom, his thumbs digging into her hips. Then, giving her a wicked grin, pulled her panties down with a single yank.

Chloe squeaked into a moan, her back arching as Lucifer’s mouth replaced his hands, his tongue licking, and curling, prodding deep into her until the air almost left her lungs. Her free leg kicked out and wrapped around his waist. She bucked toward his mouth, her hands twisting into the sheets.

His tongue slid into her, only to withdraw so he could nibble at the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. He caught one of her hands at the wrist and brought it to her breast, his hand lightly massaging over hers.

At his urging, she pushed up her t-shirt and cupped her breasts. Her thumbs rolled over her nipples, teasing them into peaks. She looked up at him with half-hooded eyes and flexed the leg wrapped around his waist to draw him closer.

He walked on his knees toward her as she tugged at him, nibbling and kissing as he moved. His free hand tugged at the waist of his boxers, pulling them low, as he lowered her carefully back on the bed. He propped himself up over her with one arm on either side of her head. Her hands slid up his chest to cup both sides of his face, pulling him down for a kiss.

He kissed her deeply, allowing her to taste herself on his lips, while he kicked off his boxers. His hand slid down her left side, fingertips trailing the sensitive skin beneath her breast, as he gently rolled her over to her side.

Lucifer pulled the blanket back over her, and then slipped in behind her. Pressing a kiss to her shoulder, he slipped his arms around her waist and buried his face in the crook of her neck.

Chloe reached up to stroke his cheek as he slowly began to move. His thrusts were shallow, but gentle, filling her with a sort of languid contentment. Slowly, he began to kiss her shoulders and a throat and trace her body with light touches.

She turned her head just enough to kiss him as her body arched into him. Her breath hitched as he trembled behind her, his gasps harsh and ragged in her ear. Then, suddenly, he was everywhere. His hands, lips, and tongue touching her places that should’ve been impossible until she felt as though she would burst from her skin.

She cried out as Lucifer’s thrusts grew sharper, deeper, yet still tender. He trembled against her, his breath harsh in her ear as he suddenly tensed, and then relaxed. After a moment, he loosened his grip on her and snuggled into her back, his nose nuzzling her hair.

Breathing a contented sigh, Chloe shifted in the circle of his arms and rolled over, so she could lay nose to nose with him. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he repeated and pressed his lips to hers in a close approximation of kiss. “Remind me to thank Ms. Lopez.”

Chloe caged his face in both hands, cupping his cheeks, and a thumb over his bottom lip. “She’ll be here in a few hours to take us to the airport.”

She pressed a quick kiss to his nose and reached for the book that had somehow managed to stay on the bed. “You want me to read some more or are you good?”

“I’m good,” he said, shifting so that he could pull his arm out from under her. “You should try to sleep.”

Chloe smiled, sucking in her lips, and shook her head. “No, I’m good.” She tangled her legs with his and snuggled into his chest. “Talk to me.”

He began to play with her hair, sifting the long strands between his fingers, and then releasing them so that they splayed out over the blankets. “About what?”

“Anything,” she said and propped herself up on one elbow. “Your brothers and sisters. Why you started reading these books. Anything you want.”

“My sisters are far more interesting than my brothers,” he began after a long moment. “They’re also far more likely to stab you.” A sigh escaped his lips and he rolled over onto his belly, pillowing his head with his arms. “As for the books, they helped me understand something I should’ve realized all along.”

“What’s that?”

Lucifer lifted his head just enough so that she could see his eyes. “That you are under no obligation to care for me.”

“Lucifer that’s…”

He shook his head, rubbing his chin against the pillow. “I lov—am fond of you. And that’s true whether you feel the same or not.”

Chloe smiled, a little heartbroken smile, and kissed his forehead. “I lov-fond you too.” She cleared her throat, swallowing as she looked away, and then cracked open the book. “Okay, when we left off you, well, book you, had just jump naked from the gym.”

“Auditorium.”

“Right. Auditorium.” She nodded, rolling onto her stomach so that she could more easily hold the book. “While catty mean girl Jophiel had just blackmailed Raphael into helping her get Ambriel kicked off the debate team.”

“Which is completely accurate, by the way….”

\--------

At just past four in the morning, Pierce watched as a pajama-clad Ella Lopez streaked across the parking lot to scramble up the metal stairs leading to Chloe’s terrace. She banged on the glass door, bouncing from one foot to the other until Chloe appeared and let her inside.  

He grabbed the headphones from where Jasper had left them on the coffee table and pressed them against one ear.

“Oh, you guys, I’m like so sorry,” Ella’s voice crackled in his ear, breathless from her run across the parking lot. “I know I said I’d pick you up at four sharp, but I had to sing the fish to sleep and…” her eyes widened truly seeing Chloe for the first. “Whoa.”

“Ella, first of all. It’s fine. We don’t have to be at the airport until six,” Chloe said, raising both hands in surrender, and then wrinkled her nose. “Since when do you have a fish?”

“Well, technically, he’s evidence,” Ella explain, sniffing as she walked a circle around Chloe. “But no fair changing the subject. You, my friend, look thoroughly done. As in boned, banged, porked, boinked, flipped you over a chair and…” she bit her bottom lip and grunted as she jerked her hips forward. “took you on the hot dog bus to taco town.”

“Wow.” Chloe’s mouth opened wide and she made a sputtering sound, her eyes bulging as she winced. “I’m going to wake up Lucifer so we can go.”

As she tried to walk away, Ella stepped in front of her and raised her hands to block her path. “Wait.” She took a deep breath, obviously flustered, and then lowered her hands. “Okay, only because I so majorly screwed up last time.”

“Ella, you didn’t screw up—”

Ella made a hissing sound, lifting one finger to silence her, and then stared at her with pleading eyes. “Are you really, really okay with this? Because the last time I pushed you toward someone because of beautiful babies well…”

Chloe smiled, and laid her hands on Ella’s arms, drawing her into an almost hug. “I’m more than good.” She breathed a sigh before turning to the stairs leading to her bedroom. “When you know, you know.”

 

\--------

In the apartment across the courtyard, Pierce pulled off the headphones just as Jasper entered the front door. The other man was dusty, as if he had just walked for miles down a desert road, a large, a grin plastered on his face.

“Hey, boss!”

Pierce frowned at Jasper, eyes narrowing in suspicion. He hadn’t realized that Jasper had left the apartment. Then there was his almost manic glee in his expression. “Where have you been?”

Jasper plopped down on the couch, sending a cloud of dust into the air. “What do you call it when you watch a house, but don’t plan on stealing anything?”

“Surveilling.”

Jasper snapped his fingers, and then pointed at Pierce, winking. “I was surveilling Wyatt.”

Pierce’s eyes narrowed slightly, his brow furrowing, as he crossed his arms over his chest. “And?”

“Well, aside from being a sexy redhead,” he said, pulling his phone from his jacket pocket. “She has a very regular routine.”

He tossed the phone to Pierce who caught it with one hand and swiped with his thumb.

“Does she ever deviate from it?” he asked, and then swiped to the photo of a pretty woman in her mid-thirties. He froze, his heart racing at the sight of storm gray eyes staring back at him.

“Told you she was hot.”

Pierce clutched the phone in his hand. Another loose end had just come back to haunt him. “What’s she doing right now?”

“Sleeping,” Jasper said with a smirk, and then yawned into the back of his hand. “She gets up at five, jogs for several miles, gets home by six, showers, eats breakfast, and is off to work by seven.”

“It’s Saturday, so she’s probably not going in,” Pierce pointed out, frowning. “So, she’ll be home.”

Jasper shook his head. “She’ll be at the grocery store with her kid at eight.” He reached down under the couch and pulled out his laptop. “She has some serious OCD.”

“No,” Pierce said, staring down at the photo. “She’s paranoid.”

\--------

Avery Wyatt was a tiny woman, barely five feet if she were an inch, but had a presence that made her seem much larger. A little girl with the same auburn hair walked a few steps ahead, her small fingers clutching at the basket.

Pierce wandered through the store, randomly chunking things into his own basket. He had let his beard grow out into a full goatee and changed the way he dressed. More importantly, as far as everyone knew, he was dead and buried. The chance of him being recognized was slim and would most likely be chalked up to coincidence. At least that was what he hoped.

Wyatt turned down an aisle only to stop abruptly and frown up at something just out of reach. Seizing upon an opportunity, as he always did in his long life, he closed the distance between them and reached toward the shelf.

“Here, let me get that for you.”

“Thanks.” Wyatt smiled up at him, a faint blush staining her translucent cheeks. “Two, please, and the one right next to it.”

Pierce flashed her a dazzling smile and retrieved the items from the shelf. “You look really familiar,” he said as he set the items into her nearly full basket. “Have we met?”

Wyatt giggled, shaking her head, and then continued down the aisle. “Nice try.”

The little girl twisted around, without letting go of the basket, to shrug her shoulders at him.

Smirking, he stared after Wyatt and watched her round the corner to the next aisle. In that simple interaction, he had learned much about the woman that was now the lynchpin of his plan. She didn’t trust at face value.

Squaring his shoulders, he raced around the corner and nearly collided with Wyatt’s basket. “Okay, Okay,” he said, softening his features into a boyish grin. “That was lame, I admit it.”

Wyatt raised a brow at him, a cold look in her storm-colored eyes, and frowned. “Well, the first step is admitting the problem, excuse me.”

When she tried to brush past him, he hooked her basket with two fingers, stopping her from moving. He let go of her basket and held his hands out, placating.

“Let me start over,” he said in his most cordial tone and smiled pleasantly. “I’m Pierce Mathews. I just moved here from Vermont.”

Wyatt looked at him, trying to decide whether or not to blow him off again when she blew out a breath and stuck out her hand. “Avery Wyatt, and that is my daughter—”

“Do you want to be my new Daddy?” the little girl blurted out and walked to the front of the basket to stare up at him.

“Amber,” Wyatt groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose, shaking her head. “We’re from Tampa.”

“What happened to your old Daddy?” Pierce asked, slipping into his new persona. Pierce Mathews would be shy, he decided, and a bit awkward, but just bumbling enough to be endearing. Someone that would seem utterly unmatched by the more savvy and secure Avery Wyatt. “I, uh… darn, forget I said anything.”

Wyatt breathed a sigh that ended in a hum and smiled just faintly. “Trying my best.”

He chuckled nervously, sagging his shoulders just enough to seem nervous. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Ms. Wyatt,” he said with a tight smile that brightened into a more hopeful expression. “Maybe I’ll see you around?”

Wyatt looked at him for a long moment, and for a moment he knew she was considering blowing him off again. Then she sighed and shook her head.

“Okay, fine. Here’s the thing. I work long hours at a dangerous job where my colleagues hate me because there is a non-zero chance I may arrest them. I also have an ex-husband who doesn’t understand that I divorced him for a reason, with whom I share custody of our four-year-old daughter. My a cat is probably plotting my death because I tossed her litter box. Oh, and I’m six weeks pregnant,” she said in a single breathless rush. “But, if you’re cool with all that. And I do mean all of that. I’ll be at The Archangel after ten.”

“The Archangel?” he asked sweat trickling down his spine. His eyes darted around, searching for any sign of danger. He felt strange and he wasn’t quite sure why.

Wyatt shrugged and wiped the dust from the handle of her basket. “It’s a jazz club off sixth street. It’s a nice place to unwind.”

Pierce smiled at her again, all boyish and charming. “I could use a bit of that.”

“Oh?” She eyed him, brows lifting to her hairline. “And what’s got you all wound up?”

“Believe it or not, my kids,” he said with a bit of wistful pride in his tone. “I’m a high school teacher.”

“You’re right,” Wyatt said with a smirk and pushed her basket past him. “I don’t believe you.”

He watched her round the corner, her child clinging to the basket beside her. Avery Wyatt would be difficult, but not completely insurmountable. Her tactics were interesting. She painted herself in the worst possible light as a challenge and a warning.

He had known people like her in the past. Accepting her challenge, taking the chance, would endear him to her. Her baggage was really no more trying than Chloe’s had been A kid, a lingering suitor, and a career that absorbed the majority of her focus. Chip away at any of those things and she, herself would crumble. Not that it truly mattered. He didn't need her affection, just her devotion to the cause he planned to steer her towards.   
  


\----To Be Continued----


	5. Part Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The site is being weird. I may end up reposting...

Pierce never thought he would return to his old base of operations, and yet, here he was. He was looking for something, he wasn’t sure what. If it was here, it was long gone. Wyatt and the rest of internal affairs had swooped down upon the area not long after his alleged death, leaving nothing unturned.

“So, boss,” Jasper said, sticking his hands into his pockets as he rocked back on his heels. “It’s your afterlife or re-life or whatever they call it when you crawl out of your own coffin before your funeral, but going to see Wyatt was pretty nuts.”

Pierce rolled the rock around in his hand. He stared at his old desk. Just a few weeks ago it had been covered with papers held down by the countless rocks he had collected over his many lifetimes.  Now it was completely scrubbed bare as if he had never existed at all. It some ways, it was exactly as he wanted. A clean slate.

“Good thing she didn’t recognize you.”

Rubbing the rock between his thumb and forefinger, Pierce craned his neck to look around the factory.

“Oh, she did,” he said with a slight smirk. “She just wasn’t going to make an issue of it with her kid there.”

“Okay,” Jasper mouthed and sucked on his teeth before bellowing a breath. “You used her kid as a human shield.”

Pierce slid the rock between his first two fingers and it held it up as if to address it instead of Jasper. Tiny flecks of dust began to drift down from the rafters, pattering to the floor like ashy snowflakes. “And she knew it.”

“You sound impressed, boss.”

Pierce dropped his hand, palming the rock, and turned his back to the factory floor, the dust crunching beneath his feet. “Depends on what she does next.”

Brushing the dust from his shoulders, Jasper smacked his lips and seemed to consider for a moment. “You want her to come after you?”

“I want her to look for me.” Pierce squared his jaw and slowly ground his teeth. “We’ll feed her enough information to keep her hooked. Eventually, word will get back to Chloe and Lucifer.”

Jasper eyed him with an odd expression. “You sure that’s a good idea, boss?” He walked a half circle and then turned on his heel to face Pierce. “I know you were out most of the week Lucifer was tearing us a new one, but trust me, you don’t want to cross this guy.”

“I’ve already crossed him,” Pierce said, his voice dropping to low, almost hiss. “Now he needs to know I’m out there, never quite sure where I am or what I’m planning. Chloe has fifty years left at most, but Lucifer? He has eternity.” He smiled coldly, bearing just a hint of teeth. “And now so do I.”

 

\--------

Bugging Wyatt’s office proved to be impossible. The woman never seemed to leave. Not even to tend to her daughter whom no one had seen since that morning at the supermarket. He had asked Jasper to look into and discovered that Wyatt had sent the girl to live with her father in the United Kingdom. Tentatively, he considered it good news. An indication that she, at least for now, she had taken the bait.

For now, he merely had to sit back and toss out tiny crumbs, hints, and rumors, of his possible survival. “How’d the raid go?”

Jasper looked up from his place on the couch. “Good for the LAPD. Our guys gave almost no resistance,” he said and flung one arm over his head. “Sucks about Mason, though. I kind of liked the guy.”

Pierce nodded and stared out the window to the terrace leading to Chloe’s apartment. It has been just over two weeks since she and Lucifer had gone on their jaunt to Argentina, which meant they were due back any day. Briefly, he wondered about the residents of the apartment in which he currently resided. It had been weeks and there was still no sign of them.

“Mason knew I’d eventually call in my favor,” he said coldly, stretching as he rolled his shoulders. “Who made the arrest?”

Yawning, Jasper wiggled until he was half laying on the couch. “Espinoza.”

Pierce frowned, taking a deep breath through his nose. Having Espinoza at the scene wasn’t exactly ideal. He was too close to the case and could inadvertently cause certain theories and information to be dismissed. Especially if that information hinted that Charlotte Richard’s killer might still be alive. “Any sign of Wyatt?”

Jasper grunted and stretched out his long, lean frame until he hung bowlegged off the couch. “She showed up afterward to congratulate Espinoza and then kick everyone out. He jerked his chin toward Pierce. “Oh, and she’s not knocked up if you’re squeamish about offing a pregnant woman.”

“I’m not,” Pierce said with a frown, sucking his teeth for a moment. “She may think I am.”

“Naw, I checked around. It’s apparently part of her _I’m not fucking you, ever,_ speech.” Jasper lifted his shoulders, blinking owlishly at Pierce. “Eh, sorry, boss.”

Pierce shook his head. “I wasn’t interested.”

“Yeah, I get you. I mean badass hottie? Who’d wanna fuck that?” Jasper said with a snort and then kicked his feet up on the coffee table. “But, the kid, cat, and clingy ex-husband are all true, though. She shipped the kid off to Daddy the moment you surfaced, so things might be rolling.”

“Or it might just be part of their custody agreement,” he said, and the blinked, staring hard out the window. “Check the sound.”

Jasper scrambled up on the couch and turned on the microphone.

“Sure, boss, but Decker’s not supposed to be home until tomorrow,” he said, pressing the headphones to his ear and strained to listen. After a moment, his eyes widened and he gestured to the other set of headphones. “Definitely getting something.”

Pierce picked up the headphones from the end table and looped them around his neck just in time to hear Chloe’s front door open. He strained to listen, and then, after a moment, he heard Dan’s familiar voice echo in his ear.

“Ella!” Dan less whispered and more simply shouted hoarsely, as the woman brushed past him, her arms overburdened with packages. “We have no business being here.”

Ella rolled her eyes and flung the bag to her hip, sending a spool of neon purple ribbon flying into the air. It shot across the room like a comet, unwinding as it went, and then rolled beneath the couch. “Dude, it’s not breaking and entering if you have a key!”

“I have a key because of Trixie,” Dan reminded and bent down to scoop up the ribbon. He grabbed it by the end, but only managed to unwind it further, until it became a purple, satin puddle at his feet. “Is this because your fish died?”

“This is nothing to do with Mr. Wigglebottoms,” she said a bit too empathetically to be believed and dropped the bags at her feet. She spared a quick glance skyward before turning her attention back to Dan. “The little guy is up there swimming around in the big aquarium in the sky. No, dude. This about Chloe and Lucifer coming home after a two-week sexathon in Argentina.”

Dan sighed, shaking his head, and gave the ribbon another yank. “And you want to throw a welcome home party.”

“Yeah,” Ella said, goggling at him and retrieved a large banner from the bag. “I wanted to have it at Lux, but the new general manager said that their insurance doesn’t cover glitter based anaphylactic shocks.”

“Maybe,” Dan began gently and took the banner from Ella. “Maybe you should let them settle in a few days before throwing any wild parties?”

Ella sulked, wilting just a bit around the edges, and exhaled. Then, a realization came over her, and she narrowed her eyes to slits and gave Dan her best mean look.  “You know something, don’t you?”

Dan opened his mouth and made a small sound of denial, then shook his head. “Not as much as I like,” he said, raising both hands. “Like with the whole Wyatt thing.”

“Uh huh,” Ella said shortly, eyes narrowed as she bobbed her head up and down slowly. She pointed a finger at him. “Just so you know, I’m only letting you change the subject because that raid was super weird.” 

Dan nodded slowly, grinding his teeth, just barely keeping a reign on his temper. “It was supposed to be a front for a low-level drug ring. We expected resistance, but when we got there the guy just surrendered. And he was way too smug about it.”

“You think he intended to get caught?”

“I don’t know,” Dan said, both frustrated and bewildered. “Wyatt arrived before I could talk to the guy and she put the whole place on lockdown.”

Ella sucked in her bottom lip and for a moment looked heartbroken. “So, it might have something to do with Pierce.”

“Yeah,” Dan said with a smack. “I tried to talk to Wyatt about it, but I couldn’t get two words out of her. She did congratulate me on the arrest—”

“Aww! She’s so sweet!” Ella gushed, eyes bright and happy. “I mean, yeah she’s a total hardass who ripped me a new one over missing labels in the evidence locker room, but still totally sweet. Like a little candy heart with 'Fuck You' written on it!”

Dan looked at Ella for a long moment. “Right.” His hands balled into a fist and he clenched his jaw, not quite trusting himself to speak. Then, he took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled. “Pierce is dead, but his organization is still out there.”

“Yeah,” Ella said softly, soothingly, and nodded her head for emphasis. “That’s why Lieutenant Wyatt is not letting up.”

He shook his head slowly, quietly seething. “She’s concentrating on the wrong person.”

“Chloe seems really happy,” Ella reminded, grinning as she pulled a package of leopard print streamers from the bag. “And she didn’t do anything wrong. Wyatt knows that.  You just gotta have faith, man.”

Dan sighed, ready and willing to change the subject. “Their plane lands tomorrow at six.  Are you going to be ready or should I make a pit stop at the Pudding Barn?”

With an almost giddy enthusiasm, Ella made a beeline for the stepladder near the stove. “I’ll be ready,” she chirped as she dragged the ladder to the middle of the room. “But, if you did stop, it’d give me time to arrange an emergency tribe meeting.”

Dan groaned, shaking his head. “Sure.”

 

Ella spent the rest of the afternoon rearranging and decorating until neon purple and leopard printed streamers nearly burst from the windows of Chloe’s apartment. Dan remained glued to his phone, trying to call in various favors only to be firmly rejected.

Pierce removed his headphone and set them down on the coffee table. Contacting Wyatt had been the right course of action as he knew it would be.

Unlike Wyatt, Espinoza simply didn’t command the rest of his peers. Nor did he have their confidence. Few would listen to him, especially now in the aftermath of Charlotte Richard’s death. “Who’s the new assistant DA?”

Jasper jumped, startled, and made a little sound as he clicked a tab on his laptop. “It’s a dude, uh… let’s see. Oh, right. Evan Belloc.” He frowned and gave Pierce a sideways look. “Is he a celestial? I mean do all you guys work for the cops?”

“If he was, I’d tell you.”

Jasper shrugged. “Whatever you say, boss.” He lifted a finger, as he strained to listen. “Okay, they took off. Lopez is heading to Lux while Espinoza is going to try to catch Wyatt before she leaves for the day.”

Pierce nodded and ran his finger along the coffee table, drawing patterns in the dust. “Good.”

 

\--------

The next afternoon Ella returned to Chloe’s apartment wielding a bottle of champagne and a plan. The plan apparently being to hide behind the sofa until Lucifer and Chloe entered through the terrace doors, and then leap out in a cloud of violet glitter.

“Hey, Ella,” Chloe said seconds before being bum-rushed into an overly enthusiastic hug. “I missed you too.”

Ella flung an arm over Chloe’s shoulder, pulling her close, and then pulled when Lucifer tried to slink upstairs with the luggage. “Oh, no you don’t, mister.”

Lucifer made an “umpfh” sound when Ella flung herself into him with enough force to knock a normal person to the ground and hugged him as if he were some long lost relative. “Missed you, buddy.”

“And I you,” he said as he carefully extracted himself from her grasp. “We’re having a late dinner with Daniel if you’d like to accompany us.”

For a split second Ella looked delighted, but then her features puckered into a prune-faced frown. “Oh, that butthead.  He knew I wanted to do an emergency tribe meeting.”

Chloe laughed and squeezed Lucifer hand as he walked past them to go upstairs. “I know, but we wanted to do a family thing tonight.”

Ella frown, looking confused. “But Lucifer just totally…”  Her face cracked into a smile even as tears began to streak down her cheeks. “You…he considers me family?”

“Of course we do, goof,” Chloe said, shaking her head, a small smile on her lips. She looked down for a second before sticking out her left hand. “We already told Dan and Trixie.”

Ella blinked once, then twice, before snatching the extended hand. On Chloe’s left ring finger was a delicate filigree ring set with pearls and a large white fire opal. “Whoa,” Ella breathed, eyes growing impossibly wide. “He proposed?”

Chloe winced, embarrassed, but it was a happy look and stuck out the tip of her tongue. “Uh, no. I kinda did.”

“He hates diamonds, so uh…” she rambled as Ella pulled her hand forward to stare at the ring. “I told him he didn’t have to, but you know Lucifer.”

“No, he’s right, you deserve it.” Ella shook her head, blinking, and hugged Chloe’s hand to her. “Wow. How did this all happen?”

“We had been there a couple days when we decided to visit a vineyard.” Chloe breathed out and smiled, her eyes wide and awestruck. “His Spanish is way better than mine, so he was doing most of the talking.”

“Spanish and Chinese? Plus acting?” Ella said with a playful roll of her eyes. “Someone is an overachiever.”

Chloe shook her head, giddy with happiness. “Anyway, he was talking with one of the vintners and…I knew. Despite everything. All crazy he brings into my life. I suddenly couldn’t imagine my life without him.”

“Oh, my gosh! That’s just so…” Ella gave her a melty look and hugged her again. “So, when’s the big day?” she asked, holding Chloe at arm’s length. “And I promise no bachelorette parties of doom this time.”

“Probably never,” Chloe said with a bewildered laugh and shook her head. “At least not in this lifetime, but for now, for now. This is right. For us.”

“Oh, wow!” Ella grew fluttery and flappy, waving her hands in the air. “What about my little stars? My beautiful black-eyed girls, that’ll stay up all night playing Dungeons and Dragons with their Auntie Ella?”

Chloe mouthed a “wow,” and twisted her head sideways as she blinked. “We’re not even thinking about kids.”

“I get it,” Ella said, nodding in agreement. “It’s way too early. I mean, you still need to decide where you guys are going to live and—” She looked around in confusion as a sudden, shrill chime sang through the air. “is that your phone?”

Desperate for an escape, she hurried to her carry-on bag and yanked out her phone, then answered without looking. “Decker.”

She turned her back to Ella, hunching over the phone as if sharing a secret. “No, you’re not disturbing me. Uh, it was a great trip, thanks.”

Chloe listened quietly to whoever was on the other end, nodding and shaking her head as the caller continued to speak. “Of course, I can be there first thing. What’s this about?” She frowned, chewing on her lip before her eyes narrowed into a squint. “Okay, I’ll be there. Yes. You’re welcome.”

Chloe hung up the phone as she turned back around, and looked up the stairs to see Lucifer coming down. “That was Lieutenant Wyatt.”

Lucifer crossed the room and laid a hand on her arm. “Are you all right?”

Her hand moved to cover and she managed a small smile. “She has questions about the Sinnerman.”

“Bloody hell,” Lucifer fumed and fussed with his cufflinks. “How many more questions can she have about that over-stuffed man ham?”

“No.” Chloe shook her head, her mouth opening just slightly. “She’s always been very insistent about calling Pierce by name. This is something different.”

“Like what?”

Before Chloe could answer, Lucifer’s phone rang. She eyed the place where his phone rested within his suit jacket. Her expression dimmed. “I bet that’s her.”

Frowning Lucifer answered his phone and then brightened with false cheer. “Ah, Lieutenant Wyatt? Whatever can I do for you?”

 

Across the courtyard, Pierce smiled out the window. Things were finally going according to plan. “Jasper.”

“Yeah, boss?”

Pierce pulled the rock from his pocket and twirled it between his fingers. “Make arrangements. I’m leaving as soon as Wyatt gets confirmation that I’m alive.”

“Will do, boss,” Jasper said as he rose from the couch. “Let’s hope we can outrun the devil.”

Pierce frowned out the window, a careful smirk spreading across his features. “We’re not going to outrun him. We’re simply going to stay out of reach.”

“Right,” Jasper drew out, his tone amused. “Poke the bear through the cage. Got it. Not what I’d do with my immortality, but hey, you do you.”

 

\----To Be Continued----


	6. Part Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally supposed to be the final chapter, but I was distracted by shiny and porn, well, mostly porn.

Chloe was still awake when Lucifer slipped into bed behind her. Silently, he pulled the blankets up over them and gingerly wrapped an arm around her middle. After a long, careful moment, he shifted closer to her, spooning against her back, and buried his face into her hair.

He smelled of Lux: whiskey and exuberance with just a touch of smoke. His fingers slipped into the gap of her shirt above her navel to trace tiny patterns around her navel. He breathed in softly, inhaling her scent, and pressed a kiss behind her ear. “I told Lieutenant Wyatt everything.”

She laced her fingers with his, holding his palm against her belly, and ran her thumb over his knuckles. Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks as she chewed at her bottom lip. “But she doesn’t believe you.”

Lucifer pulled her closer to him so that his face was almost entirely buried in her hair. “I showed her.”

Chloe jerked away abruptly, nearly smashing their heads together, and sat up cross-legged on the bed. “What? Why?”

“Because she already knew,” he said, propping himself up on one elbow. “Remember when I told you that Pierce had been monitoring celestial activity on earth?”

Chloe nodded slowly and clicked on the lamp near the bed. “It’s how he knew I make you vulnerable and why he… She balled her fist into the blankets, a look of horror on her face. “And now so does she.”

A tight smile crossed his face and he cupped her cheek with his free hand. “Lieutenant Avery means me no harm.”

“Lieutenant Avery, huh?” Chloe mused with a small smile, and then grew serious. “You can’t just out yourself to people. No matter how much proof they think they have.”

“She had evidence, not proof.” Lucifer rolled to a half sitting position on the bed and stared up at her for a long moment. “I’ve never denied what I am.”

“And most people think you’re a whack job.” Her hand slid beneath the blanket to touch his bare knee. “You have to be careful, Lucifer.”

“Daniel and Ms. Lopez, or any other mortal is in as much danger with you as I am,” he said calmly and laid his head on her knee. “She simply knows that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden.”

Chloe scratched at his scalp, twirling her fingers into his curls. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Turning his head sideways, he placed a kiss to the crook of her knee and then rolled over onto his back. The ceiling fan turned above them, making a slow, lazy arc. A chubby resin angel bobbled merrily on the fan pull. “None of my siblings look like that.

“What?” Chloe glanced up at the angel, and then sighed, rolling her eyes. “It was here when I moved in. Pierce hated it too.”

“I don’t hate it,” he said softly, his tone suggesting that he was speaking of something else entirely. “It’s simply not an accurate representation.”

Chloe smiled, making a little humming sound, and caged his face with her hands. She kissed him, almost chastely, and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. “What’s wrong?”

He arched his back a little so that he could kiss her again before she pulled completely away, and then settled back against the blankets. “Officially, Lieutenant Wyatt believes that someone from Pierce’s inner circle is attempting to take over the mantle of The Sinnerman.”

“It could also be a copycat, but she’s ruled that out since,” Chloe suggested, mentally going over her last meeting with Wyatt. Then expression darkened as heartbreak crept into her eyes. “Maze?”

Eyes cold, Lucifer stared up at the bobbing angel and slowly shook his head. “Mazikeen knows the only thing sparing her from a cell in the deepest, darkest pit of hell is my affection for Dr. Linda. She would not be so foolish.”

“Yeah, I can’t believe she…” Chloe breathed and bowed her head, her eyes sparkling with the barest hint of tears. “She was one of my best friends.”

“Mine as well,” he said softly and then tilted his head to look at her. “None of this is your fault.”

“Yeah, it is, Lucifer. I slept with him, convinced myself that I was in love with him, and then I almost married him despite not knowing a damn thing about him.” Chloe snorted a laugh, shaking her head in disbelief. “And I’m pretty sure he thought Trixie’s name was Tracey.”

“At least it’s less hookerish.”

Chloe choked back a laugh, sniffling as she slapped at him. “It’s not funny.”

“I beg to differ,” he said with a grin, slapping back at her until she couldn’t hold back her laughter. Then, he scooted from beneath the blankets to sit on the edge of the bed.

Grabbing his trousers from the floor. He slipped them back on, but didn’t zip the fly, and then laid back on the bed.

“Lieutenant Avery came to Lux this evening,” he said, lacing his finger’s with Chloe’s. “She told me that she had evidence of the improbable and the impossible. If I could prove one, she would consider the other.”

“Wait,” Chloe said, realization dawning on her. “You said officially, which means what she’s going to write in her report, but not what she actually believes happened.”

Lucifer’s face twisted into a grin that was all teeth and no warmth.

“Indeed,” he said simply. His eyes were black and shining in the low light of the bedroom. Not even his devil face had looked so inhuman.

“I showed her the truth, but instead of crumbling as most mortals do.” He made a little sound, and she could feel his anger curling just below the surface.

“Then, Lieutenant Avery Wyatt stared into the face of the devil and dropped the most epic of bombshells.”

“She’s a demon, isn’t she? Lilith or something?” Chloe said suddenly, her words coming out in a rush. “Ella’s way too fond of her for her not to be an evil something.”

The anger in Lucifer’s eyes receded a bit and was replaced with genuine amusement. “Lilith is quite lovely, actually. But, no, the good lieutenant is completely human.”

“But how?” she whispered, drawing closer to him. “Even I was shocked, and I lov- know you.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t shocked,” he said quirking a grin. “But Avery Wyatt has spent a lifetime hunting monsters. She’s not going to flinch when she confronts one in the dark.”

“Lucifer, you’re not a monster,” she insisted, grabbing his chin to force him to look at her. “Not to me. And not to anyone who knows you.”

He looked at her, his eyes soft, and covered her hand with his. “Oh, but I am.” His fingertips brushed over her knuckles, tracing down the length of her arm. “I simply punish worse ones.”

Chloe blinked, close to tears, and rubbed her lips together. Her thumb brushed beneath his eye to trace his cheekbone. “You know you can tell me anything.”

“I do,” he said and sat up on the bed. He stared at her for a long moment, seeming to weigh her soul, then breathed a long sigh and stared up at the angel fan pull. He seemed to steel himself as if steeling himself for her reaction, or perhaps even his own. “Pierce is alive.”

\--------

A low chuckle churned in the pit of Pierce’s stomach until it slowly crept its way up his chest to bubble passed his tongue. He held the headphones to him, clutching them at his chest.

His plan had worked. Wyatt had taken the bait as he had intended. More importantly, she had run straight to Lucifer with her suspicions rather than Chloe. It was exactly as he anticipated.   

“Let me guess,” Jasper said as he plopped down on the other end of the couch. “Erectile dysfunction.”

Pierce clenched his jaw and stared coldly. Strange how Jasper always seemed to appear, even at times when he was certain he was alone.

“Uh, not you, boss,” Jasper added quickly, scratching at the back of his head. “I meant Lucifer. The way he and Decker are always going at—”

“Jasper.”

Jasper stared at him for a moment, and then simply shrugged. He kicked off his shoes, sending clouds of dust everywhere.

“Hey, you’re the boss. If you want to torture yourself with Decker’s much improved sex life, you go right on ahead. You’ve more than earned it.”

“So you keep saying.” Pierce glanced at the monitor before setting down the headphones. If the readings were accurate, either Chloe or Lucifer had gone into the kitchen. “Where have you been?”

“Tailing the sexy, sexy Lieutenant Avery Wyatt.” Jasper sprawled out on the couch and stretched, running a hand suggestively down his abdomen. “She might not do it for you, but man, I’d let her internalize my affairs any ole time.”

Outside the thunder rumbled, bringing with it a stray scent of ozone. Frowning, Jasper leaned toward the monitor intent on turning it off for the night. The rain usually caused too much interference to accurately monitor Chloe’s apartment.

Jasper’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, a slow salacious grin spreading across his features.

“Oh, yeah. See those spikes, boss?” Jasper asked, bobbing his head in approval, but then quickly sobered into mock seriousness. “Uh, yeah, I’m sure it’s just the light bulb again.”

\--------

 

Propped up on the counter with her head against the cupboards, Chloe wrapped her legs around Lucifer’s waist. His hand was on her breast, rubbing her nipple through the thin material of her sleep shirt. He pressed his lips against her throat, just barely scraping his teeth over her pulse point.

“This is stupid,” she gasped and raked her nails down his spine.

His back arched, pushing him further into her, his muscles bunching and curling as his wings desperately tried to beat free.

Locking eyes with her, he withdrew suddenly, and then thrust back inside, hard and deep.

Chloe cried out, her hands going to the tails of her sleep shirt. She was still wearing far too many clothes. Grinding her heels into his hips, she pulled him to her and kissed him roughly, running her tongue against his.

His hands were on her, touching, stroking, as he yanked the sleep shirt over her head. He pounced upon her exposed skin, dragging his tongue between her breasts.

He made a strangled noise. His hips rocked against hers, over and over, his thrust sliding into a demanding rhythm.

“Very,” Lucifer panted against her flesh and snaked one hand between her thighs. He stroked her gently, fingers curling and pressing, contrasting with the rough movement of his hips.

She clenched around him, drawing him inside as he moved. One arm slid around his neck as she slid partially off the counter in the effort to get closer to him. She rocked against as he moved, peppering kisses along his throat and shoulders.

“You’re not,” she gasped, catching his earlobe between her teeth, “going after Pierce without me.”

Lucifer groaned something unintelligible and braced one hand against the counter as he pushed her back against the cupboards. He kissed her, long and hard, his tongue probing her mouth with the same intensity his thrust plumbed her body.

He tried to speak, but his words were lost when she cried out and came hard. Her nails raked down his arms, leaving welts, as her back bowed, thrusting her breasts into his face.

She was trembling, or he was, as he tipped his head to her breasts. Gasping, she ran her hands over his head, tangling his curls between her fingers.

He kept going, his thrusts hard and fast, drawing out her pleasure. Then his entire frame jerked and shuddered as he spilled deep inside her.

He remained inside her as their breathing slowed, his cheek against her chest. His fingertips trailed down her body, catching in her navel, before dropping limply to his side.

“I am,” he said, pressing a kiss to her breastbone. “It’s safer for both of us.”

Chloe unwound her legs from his hips and allowed them to slid down his legs, crossing them at the ankles to cage his legs.

“He’s dangerous and immortal. How are you…” She looked away suddenly, her throat working as she swallowed hard. “And so are you when you’re not with me.”

\--------

 

“Maybe she has a thing for crockery?” Jasper suggested with a small shrug.

Watching Pierce from the corner of his eye, he unplugged his headphones and set them beside the laptop. “You still good for Denver?”

Outside it began to rain, a slow mournful pattered that made the dust in the air smell like ash.

A slow easy smile spread across Pierce’s features as he looked out the window to Chloe’s apartment. The rain was pouring down, cutting rivulets through the dust and grime that clung to the panes.

His plan had worked better than he had dared to hope. Chloe and Lucifer knew that he was alive and immortal. They would hunt him now, always close, but never quite managing to catch him.

He would become an unkillable shadow lurking on whatever happiness they tried to build together. Lucifer’s decision to sideline Chloe had been surprising, but ultimately pointless.

Chloe Decker would never allow the man she loved to rush off into danger alone. No, she would find a way to help Lucifer. Subtly, at first, or perhaps she would simply take the devil by the horns and refuse to back down. Either way, she would hunt for him at Lucifer’s side, leaving the devil vulnerable at the worst possible moment.

A thoughtful look came over Pierce’s face as he glanced down at the monitor. The rain had distorted the sound, making it appear as if there was someone in every room of the apartment.

“Denver’s fine,” he said, at last, his eyes scanning the dusty apartment. “I’m not crazy about the teaching thing, but it’ll do.”

“Oh, I don’t know, boss,” Jasper said with a grin. “You kind of remind me of my old coach.”

Pierce squared his jaw and blinked, expression deadpan. “You played football?”

Jasper looked appalled. “And mess this up?” he said and made a circling motion around his face. “No, boss. I was on the chess team.”

A flash of lightning streaked across the sky, sending the shadows in the room spiraling. Slowly, like a puppet on strings, Jasper turn his head to look at Pierce.

In the dim apartment lighting, his eyes were the ash gray of a long dead fire. Jasper smiled softly, pleased or perhaps even relieved. “I can have you out in twenty forty hours.”

“Make it forty-eight.”

The rain slowed to a pattering drizzle, allowing street light to pour into the darkened apartment. Motes of dust fluttered in the rays of light, buffeted by an unseen wind.

Pierce glanced at the monitor before looking over his shoulder at Chloe’s apartment. She and Lucifer had moved back to the bedroom, but from the readings were probably just talking.

“I have one last thing I need to do,” he said, staring out the window for a long moment. "Call it insurance."

“Well.” The other man sighed, seeming strangely disappointed, and leaned forward to blow the dust from his keyboard. “As I’ve said before, you’ve earned my time.”

 

\----To Be Continued----


	7. Part Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of meta in this chapter. One more to go.

Pierce scowled out the window, glaring at the terrace to Chloe’s apartment. The sound of a long, lingering moan punctuated with clipped pants echoed through the static in his headphones.

“Lucifer,” Chloe gasped, her voice low and husky. "Don't stop."

Pierce knew from experience that she was close, so very close. She cried out suddenly, the sound of wet skin upon skin growing with her whimpering moans. His groin tightened as her climax grew and rolled into another.

His eyes drifted shut as his fingers drifted to his zipper almost of their own accord. Leaning forward, he gripped the window frame and glared at the growing bulge in his pants. He had almost forgotten what a lusty, trashing mess Chloe could be.

Pierce straightened, backpedaling from the window when the front door opened behind him. He combed his hands over his head, pushing the headphones to rest on the back of his neck. “Jasper.”

“Yeah, boss. It’s me,” Jasper said with a flourish, and then grunted in approval. “They at it again?”

Squaring his jaw, Pierce turned from the window, his eyes fixed in a cold, forbidding stare. “I thought you were tailing Wyatt.”

“Yeah, part of what I came to tell you about,” Jasper said, shifting a huge duffle bag from one shoulder to the other.  

“Wyatt is planning a surprise visit to a crime scene Espinoza’s working,” he said, kicking the door closed behind him. “After that, she has a meeting across town with her superiors.”

“To talk about her investigation,” Pierce guessed, grinding his teeth as a long, low moan poured out from the headset. This time it was Lucifer making most of the noise.

“Ah, cheer up, boss,” Jasper said with a snicker, poking the inside of his bottom lip with his tongue. “You got to fuck her first.”

“Yeah, I did,” Pierce said with a glower, his hand rubbing absentmindedly at his arm. The mark writhed against his skin, moving in tandem with Chloe’s mewling cries.

Smirking coldly, he realized he knew exactly what Lucifer was doing to her to coax those sounds. More importantly, he had done all those things to her first. His gaze flicked to Jasper who was watching with a strange look in his eyes. “Did you get it?”

“Sure did, boss,” Jasper chirped brightly and plopped down on the couch, sending a cloud of dust flying into the air. He reached into the duffle bag at his feet and pulled out a holstered sidearm. “Fresh from evidence lock up just like you asked. They really ought to put a lock on that door, but whatever, right?”

Pierce took the pistol from Jasper’s outstretched hand and checked the safety. It was a larger, heavier weapon than he preferred, but would suffice for now. “We’ll intercept Wyatt on her way—”

“Oh! Almost forgot. While I was there, I managed to pick you up something kind of sexy,” Jasper said suddenly and began digging through the duffle bag. “It’s around here somewhere. Ah! Here we go.”

Jasper pulled a small, curved knife wrapped in a filthy bandana. He shook the blade once, the ratty cloth falling to the floor, to reveal the unmistakable surface of a demon blade. “Oh, did I mention that Wyatt is a superhot badass?”

Pierce opened his mouth to speak, but before he could a moan of pure want crackled over the headphones.

“A detective on the streets, but a freak in the sheets, eh, boss?” Jasper said, giving the blade an experimental twirl before handing it hilt first to Pierce. “But, anyway, here. You won't be able to give Lucifer the perma-deads without something, not of this world, so, better take it just in case he and Decker get out of bed this week.”

Ignoring the gasps and giggles pouring from the headphones, Pierce took the offered blade and ran a fingernail along the feathery etchings. It was heavier than he remembered, but just as impossibly sharp.

“Maze will come for this.”

Jasper shrugged and leaned back among the couch cushions, folding his arms behind his head. “Not without her kneecaps, she won’t.” Scratching his head on the back of the couch, he chuckled and kicked his feet on the coffee table. “Apparently, Wyatt doesn’t consider _Oh, that zany Maze,_ to be a valid explanation of a suspect’s death.”

Pierce frowned, thinking for a moment. Truth be told, he had been so focused on ending his curse that he didn’t spend much time reviewing individual cases. Left to her own devices, the demon was never particularly gentle, but her bounties always arrived relatively intact. Save once.

“The case involving Lopez’s brother.”

“Yup, that’s the one,” Jasper said with a pop and flung an arm over the back of the couch. “Then, she stabbed the woman who tried to frame her, uh…what’s her name…” He snapped his fingers a few times, trying to remember, and then gave up. “Anyway, It happened right around the time you breached the impenetrable fortress of Decker’s panties, so…” he nodded at the headphone’s circling Pierce’s neck. “not surprised you forgot.”

Pierce glanced down at the headphones, now silent for the first time in hours. “Was this before or after Wyatt learned the truth about Lucifer?”

“Before, but not by much,” Jasper said, yawning into the back of his hand. “Those two incidents prompted Wyatt to investigate why you didn’t investigate. And that’s how she figured out the demon had been working with you.”

“And then, Wyatt tried to arrest Maze.”

“Oh, no, boss,” Jasper corrected with a low whistle. “She managed. Long story short. Wyatt tried to bring Maze in for questioning, Maze resisted with knives, and so, Wyatt relocated Maze’s kneecaps to the next county.”

Pierce blinked, surprise flashing on his normally stoic features. “That’s—”

“Hot? Yeah, boss. It was,” Jasper said with a dreamy sigh. “Man, you should’ve seen it.”

He held out his fist, sideways mimicking Maze’s stance with a blade.

“The demon was all _ah-ha!_ ” Jasper said, raising the pitch of his voice and scowled as he fake lunged. “Then Wyatt was all, _Bitch, please._ ” He clasped his hands together and stuck out his index finger, and then made two double tap jerking motions.

“Hot,” Jasper repeated, blowing on the end of his finger before grinning back at Pierce. “So, uhm, moral of the story, don’t take a knife to a gunfight with Avery Wyatt.”

Squaring his jaw, Pierce gave Jasper a long, cold stare before turning back to the window. “Let me know when Wyatt is en route to Espinoza’s location,” he snapped and slipped the headphones back over his ears, dismissing Jasper without a further word.

If the last few weeks had taught him anything it was that Chloe and Lucifer loved their pillow talk.

\--------

Panting and slick with sweat, Chloe slumped forward and pressed her cheek against Lucifer’s ankles. She shifted slightly, rubbing her breasts against his knees. “What are we doing?”

“The reverse cowgirl,” Lucifer replied, lazily playing with the ends of her hair. “Not to be confused with the very delightful Betty Rocker-oh—"

She clenched suddenly, a wet, warm caress where he was still semi-hard and hypersensitive. “We can’t keep settling arguments with sex.”

Arching his back, Lucifer thrust into her, lifting her slightly from the bed. She ground her hips into his, pushing him back down, and pitched forward. Her breasts bounced as she rocked back and forth upon his length.

“Nothing’s settled,” he murmured, his fingers tracing her navel before slipping between their bodies. She was so wet. “I’m still mad at you.”

“Only because you’re an ass,” Chloe gasped, shuddering into a tiny climax. She rolled off him and crawled up the length of his body. Grabbing both sides of his face in her hands, she pressed a long, lingering kiss to his lips and snuggled against him. “It’s all your fault.”

Lucifer stroked her hair for a moment, breathing a deep sigh. Above them, the angel pull tie bobbed merrily on the ceiling fan, still as unsightly as before. “Mostly.”

“If you would’ve just told me from the start about Pierce, I would’ve...”

“You wouldn’t have believed me. That much is certain,” Lucifer said without a trace of doubt. “And, there are only so many times one can be called a liar before one realizes there is no point in speaking.”

Chloe propped herself up with her elbow against his sternum. “Not believing you isn’t the same thing as calling you a liar.” She circled her hand around the base of his shaft. Slowly, she began to stroke him, loving the feel of him, warm and impossibly hard, against her palm. “You don’t always tell the whole truth.”

Before she could blink, she was on her back. He hovered above her, wings unfurling behind him. Flames licked at his pupils as he tipped his head down, capturing her lips in a savage kiss. “Neither do you,” he said with a grunt, entering her with a single hard stroke.

He rode her hard and kissed her harder, his hips slamming into hers in a rough, uneven rhythm. His tongue fucked her mouth as his hands roamed her body, until he was everywhere.

Chloe thrashed and moaned beneath him, raking her nails up his back to where his wings joined his shoulder blades. Her hands fisted through his feathers, fingers curling, and pulled herself up to meet him.

Lucifer took a shuddering breath, trembling against her, and wrapped her leg around his hip. He kissed her again, this time tenderly, but his eyes still blazed with fire.

“So, what?” Chloe whimpered, winding her legs around his waist, and tipped her head back to give him better access to her throat. “We’re just a couple of liars who reverse cowgirl our way through every disagreement?”

“This is missionary,” Lucifer corrected as if it had been the entire point. He slowed his movements until his thrusts with long and languid. “You started it.”

“Shut up.” Biting her lip, her eyes drifted shut and she began to roll her hips with his. She drummed her heels against his spine, pleasure winding through her.

His body twisted, light and deft, propelled slightly by his wings, and she cried out. Her orgasm was slow and building, growing as his thrusts quickened.

“You could’ve shown me—”

Lucifer slammed his hips into hers, his breath harsh and clipped in her ear, and spilled deeply within her. He collapsed on her, limp and exhausted, and slipped a hand between their bodies. Carefully, he touched her, drawing out the last of her climax until she lay warm and boneless beneath him.

He kissed her tenderly and shook his head, a bitter laugh spilling from his lips.

“Shown you?” he hissed, and then sprang away from her, wings twitching in agitation. “As if angel wings have ever fixed anything!” As if to prove his point, his wings struck the lamp on the bedside table, sending it flying across the room. Shaking his head, he breathed a ragged breath and rolled onto his side. Back to her, his wings wrapped around him, hiding him behind a feathery wall. 

“Lucifer,” Chloe soothed and reached out to stroke the longest of his feathers. “These wouldn’t have fixed anything, but they might have helped me understand.”

“Understand what? Would wings have made Cain any less a good man in your eyes?” Lucifer hissed and shifted just enough so that the top of his head poked out from his wings. “No, Detective, it’s not my place nor in my nature to deny anyone their desires.”

Blinking back tears, Chloe gasped a little sob, but then swallowed and shook her head. “That’s convenient.”

Lucifer made a small, frustrated sound, not quite picking up on her sarcasm. “No, it’s not. All I have ever wanted is for you to have a choice,” he said distantly as if he were not speaking to her at all. “I will not apologize for believing—”

“What that I was perfect?” Chloe snapped, tugging at his wing. She wanted to see his face, to look him in the eye, but his wings may as well have been stone. “Lucifer, if I were perfect we’d be out shopping for preschools right now.”

The wings fluttered and then drooped down just enough so that he could see her.  He frowned, confused. “What?”

Chloe clamped her mouth shut, lips pressed into a tight line, and looked away shaking her head. “Nothing. Just something Ella was talking about the other day.”

Lucifer groaned and rolled over onto his stomach, burying his face into a pillow. “Phoebe,” he murmured with a tired sigh. “She’ll be a ginger, which is a scandal in itself, but at least Gabriel will be pleased.”

“She told you, huh?” Chloe made a sound, somewhere between a sob and a laugh, and combed the hair out of her eyes. “So, then I’m sure you know about the twins.”

“Lucia and Samantha,” Lucifer said with an exhausted sigh. His eyes were bright, shining and very far away. “I’m still not a fan of the names.”

Chloe gave a quick shake of her head and carefully lifted a wing, so she could lay beneath it at his side. “Take it up with Ella.”

He stretched his wing out, and then curled it around her, using it to pull her closer. “Only you can speak for your magic lady box, my dear.”

Chloe groaned and nudged his ribs with an elbow. “Stop calling it that.”

“And why not? It makes people, it settles arguments and has given me some of the best orgasms of my long existence. If that’s not magic, then, what is?” he proclaimed good naturedly, but with a barely detectable thread of annoyance. He was still angry despite his attempt at humor. “Besides, you forbade me from calling it a love canal.”

Groaning, she smacked at him, and then jerked the pillow from beneath his head. He fell face first into the mattress and made a big show of groping blindly. His hand palmed her breast, squeezing just slightly, before snatching the pillow back. Squishing the pillow into a ball, he shoved it beneath him and pressed his forehead against his folded arms.

“Bravo,” he muttered, his voice muffled by the pillow. “You almost managed to change the subject.”

“And you’re still trying to pick a fight,” she pointed out, snatching the pillow back, ignoring his grumble of protest, and balling it beneath her. “Pillow thief.”

“Better a pillow thief than a blanket hog,” he replied sourly, his wings shifting with his yawn. “And Samantha might be a boy.”

“No way, Mister,” she said, poking his shoulder before rubbing the back of his neck. “Girls or nothing for you.”

Yawning, he blinked, eyelashes fluttering against his arms, and then turned his head sideways to look at her. “Nothing is more likely.”

“I know.” Chloe smiled and nodded before leaning forward to kiss him. “Babies probably aren’t going to be our thing, but Ella wants one all the same.”

“She should try the pound.”

The skin around Chloe’s eyes crinkled as she tried very hard not to laugh. Failing miserably, she giggled and peppered his face with kisses. “Ass.”

“Why, thank you.”

Softly shaking her head, she kissed him again, this time slow and lingering. She nibbled at his bottom lip as his wings tightened around her. “Now, who’s changing the subject.”

One wing stretched down her back, tickling the back of her knees, while the other slipped beneath her. Moving in unison, they lifted her from the bed and pressed her to his chest as he rolled to his back. “I’m too tired to settle another argument.”

“We haven’t settled anything,” she murmured, pulling the blankets up over them before snuggling into his arms. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t talk to me.”

Winding his fingers in hers, he rolled over onto his side and peered at her over their clasped hands. “I...I trusted you implicitly, and yet, not at all when it mattered most.” His lips quirked into an almost smile. “I was a coward and a fool, and I almost lost you because of it.”

“So, we’re both idiots,” she said after a long moment, smiling a little. “But, you were nowhere close to losing me.”

She kissed him again, slow and lingering, and then nuzzled his nose. Tenderly, her free hand slid down his belly to cover his cock, giving it a light stroke.

“I think you broke me,” he murmured, peering down at his flaccid shaft, which didn’t even twitch in response.

Chloe giggled, and then outright laughed at his indignant expression. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think I can walk.”

“Somewhat,” he said, dramatically, but with a smidge of pride. Then, he cupped her cheek with one hand and tilted her chin toward him. “But I suppose we can have that talk now. Idiot to idiot.”

Chloe pressed a quick kiss to the pad of his thumb, her eyes shining. “Yeah.”

\--------

Jasper flung himself on the couch, gagging and clutching at his stomach. “Listening to those two fuck is one thing,” he said, his cheeks ballooning, “and by that, I mean hot, but this talk about our feelings thing—" he mock shivered and glanced up at Pierce. “Ironic that you and Decker were both planning to hit it and quit it. But, hey, what can you do? Right, boss?”

Pierce glared out the window to Chloe’s apartment, nostrils flaring. Suddenly, he ripped the headset from his head and toss it to the couch, nearly hitting Jasper. “Are we ready?”

Jasper rose from the couch and toed his feet into his shoes. “Yup, and don’t worry, boss,” he quipped, brushing the dust from his ragged jeans. “We’ve done this a thousand times.”

\--------

Pierce stood across the street from an old warehouse in a rundown part of town. Less than an hour ago, Espinoza with a small team of uniforms had swarmed the place. They didn’t find anything, nor were they ever intended to. He had given up one of few remaining safehouses for one purpose, and it had just arrived.

Lieutenant Avery Wyatt climbed out of her car, pausing for a moment to brush the dust from her blazer. She was as tiny as he remembered but moved with an easy authority that made her seem twice her size.

He unholstered his pistol, holding with both hands at waist level. The gun lifted, almost of its own accord, tracking her as she strode toward a uniformed officer. He aimed without intending to fire, realizing he had a near perfect shot.

“Hey, Garcia,” Wyatt called out the moment she was in earshot of the officer. “Espinoza around?”

Her tone was pleasant and professional, but nevertheless, Garcia flinched and stood at guarded attention. Internal Affairs rarely had friends among the rank and file.  “Yes, ma’am. He’s inside.”

She nodded at Garcia and stepped away, her booted heels ringing against the asphalt as walked toward the open door of the warehouse. 

He lowered the gun, pointing it to the ground. His goal was not to be killed, which would lead to his capture, but to tweak Lucifer’s nose. More importantly, it was a grisly message to Chloe. A reminder that he was enjoying the life she taught him to love.

The gun drifted between Pierce’s hands, back and forth, his finger hovering over the trigger. Wyatt paused in mid-step and reached inside her blazer for her phone.

“Wyatt,” she said into her phone. Her tone was clipped and terse as if she didn’t care much for the person on the other end. “No, I just arrived. Yes…Actually, Captain, I’m fairly sure it’s where Pierce used to store his extra flannel. So, definitely worth my time.”

She smirked, wincing an eye closed, as the person on the other end gave what was, no doubt, a less than amused reply.

“No, boss,” she chirped, amusement dancing in her stormy eyes. “I’m hilarious.”

“Boss,” Pierce repeated, the hairs on the back on his neck standing on end. His hands dropped to his sides, the gun dangling from his limp fingertips. Something was very wrong.

“Hey, hey, Lieutenant!”

Pierce’s head jerked up, a sick feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, as Ella bound through the open warehouse doors.

Ella spread her arms wide, reaching for Wyatt as if to give her a hug, but then seemed to think better of it. Her hands fell to her side and she smiled sunnily instead. “What’s up?”

A look of discomfort came over Wyatt’s face, but nevertheless, she managed a polite smile. “Hopefully, the precinct’s close rate,” she said tightly, and then nodded at the bundle in Ella’s hand. “What did you find?”

“Oh, old hard drive, like step up from a Trash-80, old—”

Across the street, Pierce tightened his grip on his gun. The plan had been to tail Wyatt to her next location and take her out before she met with her superior this afternoon. Not now, not here, not while Ella Lopez stood so close.

His body moved on autopilot. His hands coming together to point the gun at Avery Wyatt’s back. She was smaller than Lopez, but not by much. He had a clear shot, so long as she didn’t move.

An image flashed through him, more warning than memory, of the night he had shot Charlotte Richards. He dismissed it as quickly as it came. Her death had been an accident. No reason to feel guilty, despite Lucifer's insistence that he did. Hindsight demanded that it could not happen again.

He squeezed the trigger, firing twice, just as Ella spotted him from across the street. Wide-eyed and afraid, she knocked Avery Wyatt to the ground. Wyatt was smaller, but stronger, forcing Ella to angel her body so that the first bullet struck her in the throat. Then, the second arrived a split second later and buried itself in her chest.  Wyatt rolled on the ground, scrambling to pull Lopez to safety. She shrieked for Espinoza, hands pressed desperately to Ella’s wounds.

Before Espinoza could arrive, Pierce turned and ran, cursing as he fled down the alleyway. He turned down a narrow side street and raced to where he knew Jasper would be waiting.

“Problem, boss?” Jasper asked, smirking as Pierce threw himself bodily into the backseat of the car. “You still have kneecaps, so my guess is that you didn’t run into the super sexy Avery Wyatt.”

“Drive.”

He dropped the gun to the floorboard and stared wide-eyed at his hands.

They were covered with a thick layer of dusty ash.

\----To Be Continued----


	8. Part Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ack. sorry, for the long wait. This chapter would not cooperate. Not completely satisfied, but I want to move on to what I hope will be a far easier final chapter.

As a wise and, now very dead, angel had once told him that people were predictable. He’d liked Uriel, as much as he’d like most people, which wasn’t very much by most reckonings.

Even so, the angel had a point. People invariably fall into patterns. Master the pattern and the person is mastered.

Dodge, dodge, feint, dodge, lunge had been Abel’s. Over and over again, every time they fought. Dodge the punch, dodge the kick, attack with a small, harmless weapon like a stick or a rock, and then dodge his retailing blow. Then Abel would pull out his real weapon, a blade or sometimes just a larger rock.

It was the rock that ended him, finally. The rock and an interruption to his precious pattern. For that, he was cursed. That is until he met Chloe Decker.

“So, boss,” Jasper slurred, staring at him through the bottom of a beer bottle. “About Decker’s gold stitched sausage wallet.”

Pierce glowered at Jasper from the opposite side of the table. He craned his head up to look over the balcony rail to the empty stage below. The Archangel was a small hole in the wall club, nowhere near the splendor of Lux. Yet, it had a strange charm of its own. It felt, almost alive, even at its current, near empty, state.  “I thought you said Wyatt would be here.”

Jasper shrugged and downed the rest of his beer. “Our gal on the inside…” He paused, looking thoughtful, and tilted his head. “You remember Marit, boss?”

He did, vaguely. She was local talent; a cop who occasionally made deals with bad people to put worse ones behind bars. They had crossed paths before he assumed the identity of Marcus Pierce. “Yes, Detective Lamar,” Pierce said with only the barest of interest. “I wasn’t aware we had called in that favor.”

Jasper winced, squeezing an eye shut, and gave Pierce an apologetic look. “Sorry, boss,” he explained carefully, not quite meeting his eyes. “I thought I told you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Pierce grunted, shrugging his shoulders. “I won’t be in California much longer.”

Jasper beamed at him, his face nearly bisected with a grin. “Glad to hear it, boss.”

His smile faded into calm serious lines as he glanced over the balcony rails to the front doors of the club. A pair of stylized angel wings were painted above the entryway. They were strangely pristine in an otherwise worn down club, their long white feathers ending in a trail of twinkling stars.

“Anyway, according to Lamar,” Jasper said, his eyes fixed on the largest and brightest star. “Wyatt’s been put on administrative leave.”

Pierce nodded to himself, more pleased than he cared to admit. His eyes followed Jasper’s to the star above the bar. The hairs stood on the back of his neck as the first star of morning seemed to twinkle back at him. “So, she’s handled.”

Jasper chortled, slapping his thigh, and then downed the last of his beer. “That’s what I love about working with you, boss,” he said cheerfully, snapping a finger at Pierce. “Even when things go completely fubar, it turns out how you wanted.”

Before Pierce could react, their waitress appeared. She cleared the table as he glowered, oblivious to his irritation. But then, he wasn’t irritated with her so much as he was with the man sitting across from him.

The waitress placed two fresh beers on the table after inquiring if they needed anything else, and the left in a swish of skirts. 

Pierce snatched the bottle and downed most of the contents. He shifted in the booth, feeling as something hard dug into his thigh. Frowning, he dug in his pocket and fished out the rock Jasper had given him weeks ago.

It was either the last remaining rock of his old collection or the first of his new. He still wasn’t sure.  “Any word on Lopez?”

Jasper took a swallow of his beer, and then pressed his lips together, shaking his head.

“Gone.” He sighed and gave his best sympathetic look, but it was hollow, mocking. “I know he’s not your favorite person, but Espinoza is pretty broken up about it. It hadn’t been that long since—”

“It was an accident,” Pierce hissed, exhaling through his nostrils. “They were both accidents.”

Grinding his teeth, he stared hard but saw nothing as he rubbed the rock between his thumb and forefinger. He squeezed the rock lightly until he felt the jagged edge he knew was there. Too dull to draw blood, but still sharp enough to cause pain, it reminded him of the woman he still loved.

The rock slipped from his fingers to land with a clacker on the table. “I don’t care who gets hurt,” Pierce hissed, shoving the rock away. “So long as I get what I want.”

“Welp, they life's a bitch, and then you die,” Jasper muttered and laid the tip of his pinky finger on the rock. “Or in your case, you die, you undie, and then you die again.”

Eyes on Pierce, Jasper pressed down hard on the rock, his entire arm trembling with the strain. Suddenly, the rock skid from beneath his finger and he jerked his hand away before it could slam against the table. He stared hard at his finger, smirking at the tiny drop of blood wobbling at the tip.

“So, what’s the plan, boss?” Jasper asked, sucking on his bleeding finger. He removed his finger from his mouth with a pop. “We still a-go for getting the fuck out of here?”

Pierce stared hard at the smear of blood staining Jasper’s lips. It seemed the rock wasn’t nearly as dull as he first believed. He would leave, soon, but not until he settled a few scores.

“If it weren’t for Lucifer, Chloe and I would be building a life together,” he seethed, his hand moving of its own accord to the demon blade concealed within his boot. “I should’ve killed him when I had the chance.”

Jasper inched sideways, scooting as far back into the booth as possible, and then tilted his head. “I’m not sure that’s true boss.”

He lifted both hands in appeasement and smiled a slow lazy smile. “Hear me out?”

Squaring his jaw, Pierce gave Jasper a curt nod, a clear warning in his eyes.

Jasper breathed a sigh of relief and reached forward to retrieve his beer. “After thousands of years of trying and countless failures, your curse was finally over—”

“Because Chloe fell in love with me,” Pierce snapped, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Part of her still loves me.”

His words were bitter, harsh like the dust hanging in the air, but he knew without question they were true. Women, people, like Chloe didn’t fall completely out of love. It was one of the many reasons the devil needed to die.

“Her feelings are what made the mark fade.”

“So, Chloe Decker is so amazing she makes men want to die, huh?” Jasper hummed, almost to himself, and swirled a finger against the dusty tabletop.

He drew a circle in the dust, then almost as an afterthought, drew two dots for eyes and short wavy line for a mouth. Then he drew another, this time with a jagged line for a mouth. Over and over he drew until dozens of smiley faces stared up at him from the dusty table. One face had three eyes and jagged teeth, while another had hands growing out of the sides of its head.

Pierce sat transfixed, unable to look away, as Jasper drew face after face until there was an army of them smiling back at him. Then, Jasper shifted slightly, his finger drifting to the far edge of the dusty table. There he drew one last face. Its head was a perfect circle with two large, round dots for eyes, and a straight line for a mouth.

Not looking up from his sketching, Jasper gestured with his chin over the balcony railing. “Her royal hotness is here.”

Pierce slid back into the shadows of the booth, and then pushed himself up just enough so that he saw Avery Wyatt walk into the club. She was pale and tired, but her eyes were hard, angry. He’d seen that look before on someone far more devilish.

Wyatt managed to take no more than a few steps into the club when the bartender rushed from behind the bar and drew her into a hug.

“I heard what happened,” he whispered, lifting her from the ground. The bartender held her for a long moment, seeming intent on sheltering her from the world. A small gestured that contradicted everything Pierce had assumed about Avery Wyatt.

“Put me down, Jett,” Wyatt chuckled, a wet sound that ended in a near sob. “I’ll be okay, promise.”

Jett hugged her tighter, dropping a kiss on her forehead before setting her back down on the floor. “You better be,” he said with a small smile and tucked her pendant into her shirt. “Your Father will kill me if anything happens to you.”

Mischief sparkled in her eyes as she bit her lip, revealing perfect white teeth. “Dad’s a kitten, it’s Mom you really have to worry about.”

Cringing, Jett stared down at Wyatt in mock terror and shivered dramatically. “I'm more scared about your big sister.”

Wyatt inclined her head back to stare up at the bartender. “Oh, she’ll totally kick your ass,” she said with a tattered smile. “And then kick mine for getting hurt in the first place.”

Pierce jumped back further out of sight as she glanced around the club.

“I’m expecting someone,” she sighed, eyes lingering a bit too long on the balcony for comfort and looked over her shoulder at Jett. “Send her over when she arrives?”

“Will do, kiddo,” he said with obvious affection and guided her to a nearby table. “I’ll grab your usual.”

In the balcony above, Pierce pressed himself into the back of the booth, grateful for the club’s low lighting. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he realized Jasper was watching him. He swallowed hard, not certain why he was suddenly so wary, and glanced down at the table.

There between Jasper’s dusty hands was a single smiley with face with large, elaborate wing arching over its head.

“So, boss,” Jasper began, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and smearing dust across his cheek like an old ashen scar. “What’s more plausible? That you fucked your mark off? Or that you lost it because God’s most beloved child was angry enough to kill you?”

Tearing his eyes away from the winged smiley face, Pierce glared hard at Jasper, a snarl curling at his lips. “Amenadiel is God’s favorite son.”

Jasper chuckled softly, a low, rolling sound, and drew another smiling face. This one huge, but misshapen, and wielding a spear. “Maybe,” he said after a moment, “but Amenadiel has never been what God loved the most.”

Pierce glanced over his shoulder to Wyatt who had all but dived into a cocktail as big as her head, and then back at Jasper. “Who is Wyatt meeting?”

“No idea.” Jasper shrugged, shaking his head. “I’ve been with you, remember?”

He sighed and added a long scar to the smiley face’s cheek. “One of the things you probably don’t know about me is that I have a killer sweet tooth. Never met a dessert I didn’t like.”

Pierce glanced back over the railing at Wyatt, shaking his head. She was still very much alone. “What’s your point?”

“There are all kinds of desserts out there, and I can honestly say I’m a fan of them all,” Jasper explained with his customary irreverence. “My favorite, my go-to dessert, is chocolate ice cream, but I’d leave it in a hot minute for tiramisu.”

Pierce blinked at him, slowly shaking his head. “So, your favorite dessert is tiramisu.”

Jasper sucked in his lips, shaking his head. “Nu-uh, it’s the one I love the most.”

“So, what are you saying?” Pierce grumbled, his nostrils flaring with his annoyance. “Lucifer is God’s tiramisu?”

Chuckling softly, Jasper leaned back and began to bounce his head against the cushioned back of the booth. “Crap, metaphor, I know. But, yeah, boss. He is.”

Pierce settled back into the booth, mulling over Jasper’s words. If Lucifer truly was God’s most beloved child what did it mean? Or even matter? “Lucifer was able to channel his emotions to light the flaming sword.”

“Yep,” Jasper said, ending the word with a pop. “Which is another reason I’m giving the magic healing twat theory a hard pass.”

Pierce clenched his jaw, quietly seething. He felt strangely betrayed, by the world, by the woman he still loved, but most of all by Lucifer himself.  Which was strange considering he and Lucifer were never truly friends. “The mark came back.”

“Probably because Big Daddy D thought you were dead, boss,” Jasper said and lifted both shoulders in a shrug before letting them fall. “No reason to be murderously furious at a dead dude.”

He craned his neck up and gestured with his eyebrows over the railing. “There’s your answer.”

Breath catching in his throat, Pierce stared hard and longingly at Chloe as she entered the club. Jett, the bartender, noticed her almost immediately in the near-empty club and led her to Wyatt’s table.

Not bothering to look up from her drink, Wyatt gestured with one hand to the chair across from her. “Have a seat, Decker.”

Without a word, Chloe fell rather than in the chair. Her eyes were red and puffy. She looked drawn and fragile, her high cheekbones standing prominently beneath her sunken eyes.

“So, first things first, Decker,” Wyatt said as she poked viciously at her drink with her straw. “I’m not a nice person, and I’ve never claimed to be.”

Chloe blinked, taken aback, and drew a shuddering breath. “I never thought you were a bad person, I just—”

“I’m used to being hated, Decker,” Wyatt said with a small smirk. “It’s okay.”

When Chloe looked and smiled up at the approaching waiter, Wyatt chuckled softly. It was a bitter, humorless sound filled with more anger than mirth. 

“Usually when I say things like that someone clutches their chest and insists that they don’t hate me,” Wyatt explained, meeting Chloe’s questioning gaze before turning to the waiter. “I’ll have another, Clay. Put whatever my friend wants on my tab.”

Flustered, Chloe pressed a hand to her chest and quickly shook her head. “I’m fine, thanks—”

“Oh, forgot,” Wyatt mused, half to herself, as she peered with narrowed eyes over her glass at Chloe. “We’re not friends.”

Chloe quickly ordered something, for the waiter’s sake if nothing else, and leaned forward against the table. She pressed her lips together, trying not to smile. “So, I have two of you now?”

Wyatt tipped her head, her eyes wide and teasing. “Why Decker? Are you suggesting that my mannerisms are in any way similar to a man who may or may not be the actual devil?”

“Nuh-uh,” Chloe hummed through lips tightly pressed together in a smile. “You’re completely different.” Her smile crumbled, quivering with her chin. “Which is probably why Ella liked you so much.”

“Yeah, well,” Wyatt mouthed rather than said and shook her head, sending her auburn hair fluttering around her shoulders. “She’s a shit judge of character.”

Chloe looked away, eyes shining in the low light of the club, and then blinked hard before meeting Wyatt’s eyes. “What did you want to see me about?”

Straw raised in mid-stab, Wyatt opened her mouth, but then closed it, seeming to consider her words. “How much do you trust Mazikeen Smith?”

Chloe shook her eyes, a trembling smile forming on her lips that came nowhere close to her eyes. “I want to say our friendship meant something. That it still means something, but I can’t.”

“Well, if it were up to me,” Wyatt said, gesturing with her straw. “I’d put a bullet in her brain. Unfortunately, Mr. Morningstar has since informed me that it may not necessarily kill her.”

Horror dawned on Chloe’s face as she tried to decide whether or not the other woman was serious.

“Listen, Lieutenant,” she began, purposely reminding Wyatt of her status, and then abruptly changed tactics. “Avery, please listen to me. Demons are—”

“Intelligent, soulless beings with highly impulsive natures,’ Wyatt recited, her tone dripping acid. “or so Mr. Morningstar claims.”

Chloe eyed Wyatt, squinting as she often did when she was trying to figure out a puzzle. “Why do you want to know about Maze?”

“Oh, that,” Wyatt drew out, once against stabbing at her drink. “Mazikeen isn’t just impulsive, she’s a traitor. Worse she’s a repeat offender. Which, I admit, is something of a hot button for me. Still…” she sucked at the end of her straw before stabbing it back into her drink. “Now that her kneecaps are mostly back where they belong, I had thought she might be useful in hunting our little immortal sociopath down.”

“I wish I could say yes.” Chloe shook her head, the corners of her mouth twitching. “But, honestly, I don’t know. She's just as likely to help him as us.”

“Well, then, she stays,” Wyatt said, pursing her lips into an almost sneer. She was pleased despite her feigned nonchalance. “Let’s hope she likes mashed potato flakes.”

“Okay,” Chloe said, her voice very small, and looked up as a huge fruity drink was set in front of her. She stared at the drink for a long moment, and then back at Wyatt. “You didn’t ask me here to talk about Maze.”

Wyatt gave her drink one last stab, burying the straw deep into the blue-tinted crushed ice. “You’re being reinstated, effective immediately.”

Chloe blinked, obviously shocked. “But the hearing isn’t for another two weeks.”

“Immediately, Decker, as in right now,” Wyatt snapped, narrowing her eyes to a near squint. “Consider your wrist officially slapped.”

“I’m grateful, but,” Chloe gasped, tears glittering on her lashes. It was obvious she was trying not to sob outright. “Is this because of what happened to Ella?”

Wyatt ground her teeth and slowly shook her head in disbelief. “You know? Most people do cartwheels when I tell them they’re off the hook.”

Chloe scrubbed at her face with the heels of her hands and took a deep breath before trying to speak. “I don’t want to be let off the hook,” she snapped, slamming her hand down on the table. “I want—” Her jaw dropped at the sound of Wyatt’s low, rolling chuckle.

“Ah, Detective, you remind me of so much of my mother,” she hummed with undeniable fondness. "But that's a story for another time." 

Looking Chloe in the eyes, Wyatt leaned forward to run her fingers along the dusty tabletop. “If it makes you feel any better, Belloc refused to drop the mishandling evidence charge. So, happy not getting promoted any time soon.”

“Mishandling evidence?” Chloe questioned, shaking her head in confusion. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

Wyatt eyed her slyly as if about to reveal some salacious detail. “It’s code for fucking your superior in the evidence locker.”

Chloe opened her mouth and then, closed it, cheeks pinking as she looked away. “I’m going to regret confessing everything to you, aren’t I?”

Gripping her straw as if it were a blade, Wyatt brought it down on a stubborn clump of ice. “Yes,” she said bluntly, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “But far less had found out everything myself.”

“Right,” Chloe muttered, looking away, and then sighed as a realization washed over her. “A sticker ended up on my shirt, so… okay.”

“Yes, well, splooge covered DNA evidence, aside,” Wyatt muttered dismissively and settled back into her chair. “We have other issues. Namely, the commissioner wants Pierce and the whole Sinnerman fiasco buried in the same hole they shoved the Malcolm Graham mess into.”

“What?” Chloe squeaked in disbelief and gasped, shaking her head. Her entire being dripped incredulity.

“Pierce killed Charlotte Richards. He killed—” her voice cracked, and she shook her head, unable to continue.

Breathing a tired sigh, Wyatt rolled her eyes skyward and began fiddling with her necklace. “As far as they know, he’s dead, and I’ve been poking at dead leads. They believe I got Ella Lopez killed, and they're partly right.”

 

Jasper cleared his throat, drawing Pierce’s attention back to him. Smirking, he drummed his fingers against the table, sending motes of dust into the air. “Welp, looks like either way you’re in the clear.”

He slid out from the booth and walked over to the rail, leaning over just slightly. “All you have to do is avoid the devil.”

“Lucifer won’t be a problem,” Pierce murmured and reached for his boot. Carefully, he pulled out the demon blade and gripped the hilt until his knuckles turned white. “Chloe won’t let him go after me alone.”

“And he’s vulnerable around her, which makes him much easier to kill,” Jasper replied, finishing Pierce’s thought. “Which circles back around to my earlier point.”

He turned back toward Pierce and leaned against the rail, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I spoke to your protégé awhile back,” Jasper said, popping his neck, and then casually looked over the railing at the women below. “He had this theory that the flaming sword was merely the manifestation of Lucifer’s emotions. That it only looked like a sword because everyone thought it should. Or something. It was an out there theory.”

Pierce shook his head slowly, a forbidding look spreading across his face. “When did you talk to him and why?”

“Right before you ventilated him,” Jasper said with a shrug, and then flashed Pierce a grin. “Bit of a twofer, that one. Killed him so he couldn’t expose you, and then used his death to shove a wedge between Chloe and Lucifer.”

“I had other reasons,” Pierce said lowly, obvious menace in his tone. “None I’d explain to you.”

“I don’t care one way or another, boss,” Jasper said, yawning into the back of his hand. “My job is to stick with you until you find your way out of this mess. Nothing else.”

Pierce looked dubious, something about Jasper’s words nagged at him. This wasn’t the first time Jasper implied that he existed for him alone.

“So, you keep saying,” he said coolly, deciding to let it drop for now. He had all the time in the world to figure out Jasper’s motives, if he even cared to do so.  Right now, however, something else the man said nagged at him. “Lucifer discarded the flaming sword before I ever met Chloe.”

“True,” Jasper agreed with a bob of his head. “But the sword was just a focus. His emotions can be weaponized without it.”

Pierce pressed his lips together and shook his head. This was a waste. There was nothing about his curse that Jasper could possibly discover that he hadn’t in the last several thousand years. “If your theory were true, Lucifer could’ve removed my mark at any time.”

Jasper chewed at his bottom lip for a moment before shaking his head. “He liked you in the beginning. At least, until you started fucking the woman he loved,” Jasper said, as if giving a lecture, his tone slightly musing. “Then you hurt her, and he wanted you dead.”

Lowering his head slightly, Pierce looked away and thought back to the night he had lost his mark. He had gone to Chloe’s apartment under the guise of a good and attentive boyfriend. He would have slipped into her bed and into her body, hoping, at last, to finally eject the devil from her heart. But he couldn’t go through with it, and he still wasn’t certain why.

“Chloe loved me,” Pierce whispered to himself. The words never sounded so unsure. “That’s why the mark….”

An impulse seized him as inexplicable as it was undeniable. He gripped his shirt sleeve and yanked it up, nearly ripping the fabric from his arm. A gasp escaped his lips as he stared at the bare expanse of his bicep with dawning horror. The mark was gone.

“Oh,” Jasper nearly purred and pushed away from the balcony railing. “Well, either Decker is suddenly back in love with you—"

Pierce jerked away when Jasper tried to reach for him, glaring as he cradled his arm.

Jasper looked over his shoulder to the dance floor below. Wyatt and Chloe rose in near unison from their table and walked out of the club’s double doors. When they had closed the door completely behind them, Jasper turned back to Pierce. The light from the starry ceiling washed the color from his eyes, making him appear blind. He smirked down at Pierce, but there was a strange sadness in his expression.

“I think the devil might be a bit upset you killed his ambiguous sister figure,” Jasper said wryly, his voice dropping to a low, secretive hiss. “boss.”

 

\----To Be Continued---


	9. Part Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, this was supposed to be a one shot. Unfortunately, it ate a radioactive apricot and took on a life of its own. Regardless, it is at last complete.

Pierce clawed at his arm, leaving welts as if he expected to find the mark hidden beneath his flesh and blood. It had faded, just as it had when he first acquired Chloe’s love. He couldn’t make her say it, couldn't do that to her. Couldn't let her say those three little words that he, like a silly child, had convinced himself were magic. Not while he felt nothing in return. Especially since, there was no magic, at least none wielded by Chloe Decker. In that respect, at least, Lucifer had been correct. Chloe was special, but not because she was a miracle. It was because she, unlike so many others, had been able to remind him of what the world had to offer.

A slow smile curled at his lips as he watched a drop of blood tumble down the length of his bicep. It landed on his elbow with an audible plop and then streaked down to his wrist. Something clicked in his mind like an overlooked puzzle piece finally snapping into place. He was Cain, the first human child to exist. All of humanity shared his blood, and in doing so, they were his. It was little wonder that one of them would pique his curiosity again. Pierce settled back in his chair and picked up one of the rocks from the desk. He rolled it over his knuckles as he stared around the paper factory, frowning. It seemed so foolish now, wanting to die.

“Jasper,” he grunted, rolling his eyes sideways to see the man in his peripheral vision. “What’s the difference between a catalyst and a key?”

Jasper picked up his laptop and looked around puzzled, as if wasn’t quite sure if he was the one being addressed. “boss?”

“A key,” Pierce began and swiveled in his chair so that he could look directly at Jasper. His expression was light, almost friendly, even as he drummed his blood-caked fingernails against the desk. “Allows or prevents entry.”

“Or keeps something inside,” Jasper reminded, tilting his head before offering a throwaway shrug. “That’s assuming your door has a lock.”

He settled down in the chair across from Pierce and opened his laptop. Leaning forward, he blew on the keyboard, sending a cloud of dust into the air. “Where I’m from, it’s the unlocked doors you have to worry about.”

Strangely curious, Pierce leaned forward just slightly and tilted his head, mirroring Jasper. “And where is that?”

Jasper shrugged with one shoulder and fished something out of the pocket of his ratty jeans. He slid his hand flat across the table, and then lifted his fingers to reveal a diamond ring. “I think this is yours.”

Pierce picked it up off the dusty table and held it between his thumb and forefinger. It was the ring he had given Chloe the night he asked her to marry him. He had wanted to build a life with her. She, on the other hand, hadn’t wanted a life without Lucifer. “Where did you find this?”

Jasper didn’t answer for a moment, but instead sighed and looked away. “A catalyst changes something, but doesn’t change itself,” Jasper said softly and blinked, his eyes very gray in the dim light. “I know people like that.”

Pierce snorted and inhaled through his nostrils before flinging the ring across the room. It hit the far wall with a clatter and bounced into a darkened corner. “I’m like that.”

“Yeah,” Jasper muttered, glancing in the direction Pierce threw the ring. “Maybe you are.”

A thoughtful look flowed over his face as he looked back at Pierce. He closed the laptop and pushed it forward so that he could lay his hands in a pile on top of the desk. “I guess that explains why you didn’t leave town when you had the chance.”

Silence stretched across the factory, thickening into a tangible tension. Pierce stared hard at Jasper, his eyes cold and unblinking, and then breathed a tired sigh. The tension unraveled around them, falling to the dirty floor like an old frayed rope. “I didn’t leave because Lucifer will never stop hunting me.”

“He didn’t know you were alive,” Jasper said with a frown, knitting his brows together as he drummed his fingers against the desk. “You could’ve gone anywhere, been anyone, and he would’ve never known.”

A dejected expression fell over Pierce’s features as a bit of his old melancholy seeped into his being. “I’ve walked the Earth for thousands of years. It’s much smaller than you believe.”

His hand went to his arm where the mark had been just yesterday. It was scratched raw, but the wounds were superficial and already beginning the scab over. “It would’ve only been a matter of time before he found me again.”

He watched Jasper draw patterns in the dust gathering on the desk and thought, not for the first time, how much it looked like ash.

“Ashes to ashes,” he whispered to himself. For some, at least. As for himself, he had faced the devil's fiery rage and lived to tell the tale. “Where is Lucifer now?”

“With Wyatt and Decker,” Jasper answered and twisted his neck until there was an audible crack. He rolled his shoulders and uttered a soft, satisfied groan. “I’m not really into dudes, but Lucifer? Yeah, I wouldn’t mind being the fourth wheel on that tricycle.”

“Jasper,” Pierce warned glaring daggers and picked up one of the larger rocks scattered across the desk. For a split second, he considered smashing it against Jasper’s face and imagined hearing the dull thud of flesh give way to the crack of bone. “Where is Lucifer?”

“Ah, sorry, boss. I got sidetracked picturing an epically hot threesome,” Jasper consoled, waggling his eyebrows, but then quickly sobered when Pierce remained decidedly unamused. “Anyway, as you know, Wyatt’s on leave.”

“Pending investigation,” Pierce supplied, a clear warning in his tone. Ella Lopez’s death had been no more his fault than Charlotte Richards had been. He tipped his head and rolled the rock around in his hand. “And?”

“And,” Jasper drew out and picked up one of the other rocks from the desk. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, sending a little cloud of dust into the air, and then tapped it against his temple. “Wyatt has no ethical or investigative reasons to avoid Lux now, so that’s where the three of them are regrouping.”

Jasper grinned suddenly, baring perfect white teeth. “And by regrouping, I mean fucking.”

Pierce snatched the rock from Jasper and balled it into his fist. Breathing out through his nostrils, he gave the other man a cold, deadpan glare. “Are they actually having a threesome?”

Jasper leered at him, poking the inside of his cheek with his tongue, and then his shoulders sagged. “Don’t I wish,” he said mournfully, and then pointed at Pierce’s arm with his chin. “What’s the plan, boss?”

“If you're right, Lucifer took my mark,” he began, rubbing absentmindedly as he fumed and scanned the room.

“Well, he didn’t crawl off Decker in the middle of the night and take it while you were sleeping, but yeah.” Jasper inhaled, puffing out his cheeks, and then it out in a rush. “He’s pissed enough to want you dead, so now you’re killable.”

Pierce chuckled lowly, shaking his head. “I was killable before.”

Flinging an arm over the back of the chair, Jasper stared up at the ceiling. A trio of birds roosted in the rafters, two males, and female. The female seemed to choose the second male, but even as she walked towards him, her eyes never left the first.   

“Yeah, but now you’ve done more than break Decker’s little tweener heart,” he mocked, glancing briefly at Pierce before returning his attention back the birds. "So, it might take a bit for him to get over it."

The female had gone back to the first male, leaving the second alone on a long, rusty rafter. “Lopez annoyed the fuck out of me,” Jasper chided, glancing briefly at Pierce before looking back at the birds. The second male had flown off. “Still, I always imagined her as an old lady with forty cats.”

Blinking once at the wall, Pierce set his jaw and slowly began to grind his teeth. Ella Lopez’s death had been an accident. His conscience was clear. The same was not true of Lucifer, however. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the devil face burning through Lucifer’s angelic visage. The devil will go to hell when he dies, and it couldn’t be more perfect.

“When I kill Lucifer,” he said with almost idly, as he were musing upon the weather. “My mark will return.”

Sighing, Jasper straightened in his chair and swung his legs forward so that he was once again facing Pierce head on. “Maybe,” he agreed, and then exhaled sharply, “but the last time you went head to head with the devil, you ended up in a pine box.”

“Only because he moved Chloe out of range,” Pierce hissed and squeezed the rock until he felt the bones in his hand creak. It was a lie and he knew it. He had lost the fight with Lucifer before it had even begun. “This time we make sure she stays close.”

Jasper sighed, shaking his head, and then slumped his shoulders. “I would remind you that you can still leave town,” he said, a brief flash of hope flitting over his features before they smoothed into impassive lines, “but, ya know. So, where do you want to do this?”

Pierce nodded, setting his jaw, and stared hard with the cold eyes of a predator. “The loft from before,” he bit out, breathing through his nostrils. It was strangely fitting, and he knew the layout like the back of his hand.

“We’ll rig the roof with explosives. If he tries to exit that way, they’re both dead.”

“Nasty,” Jasper said, with a low whistle bobbing his head in approval. “What about Wyatt?”

Pierce drummed his fingers against the table. Something nagged at him, but he wasn’t quite sure what it could be.

“If she shows up at the loft, we’ll take her out,” Pierce decided after a long moment. “Otherwise, she’s not an issue.”

“Just as well, I suppose.” Jasper made a wistful sound and flopped dramatically back into his chair. “As I said before, you've more than earned my time.”

  
********

Pierce walked down the double flight of stairs leading to the ground floor of the loft. The LAPD had swooped in within minutes of his presumed death only to be kicked out almost immediately by Internal Affairs. It seemed he hadn’t been as careful as he thought, or perhaps Malcolm Graham still cast a long shadow.

It was strange that his thoughts would wander to Graham. He had been a corrupt cop, one of several in that particular precinct.  More importantly, Graham had been ripped from Hell because he was convenient to Amenadiel’s plan.  Graham was one of three mortals to escape Hell, and the only one Pierce was certain had made it back there. He looked up at the skylight to where Jasper busied himself checking the explosives.

The window Lucifer had crashed through after spiriting Chloe away to safety had been boarded and sealed away with police tape. Slowly, Pierce looked around, noting how little the place had changed since the last he had been here.

The broken feathers and smears of blood had been cleaned, but evidence of his battle with Lucifer yet remained. A neat row of bullet holes decorated a wall and one of the few remaining columns. Dust hung thickly in the air tinged with the scent of plaster and something more.

“Right, so I’ve rigged the skylight and the roof door,” Jasper called as he made his way down the stairs and flung a large chain over his shoulders. He dusted his hands off on his ratty jeans. “Now all we need to do is get both Decker and Lucifer here.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Pierce insisted and pulled a burner phone from his pocket. He dialed the number to Chloe’s cell from memory and walked to the middle of the room while it rang. He looked straight up and realized that this was where Lucifer had shielded her with his wings.

“Decker.”

Pierce froze, briefly, picturing her in his mind. Her hair was pulled into a low ponytail and she wore just enough makeup to accent her features. She wore a turtleneck sweater with jeans. The pearl and opal ring Lucifer had given her was secure on her left hand while the bullet necklace dangled freely between her breasts.

He had never hated anything as much as he hated that necklace. “Chloe.”

“Pierce,” Chloe gasped, and he imagined the color draining from her face. Just as he knew she was about to attempt to appeal to his better nature. “Marcus, where are you?”

“Lucifer with you, isn’t he?” he asked coldly, already knowing the answer. “And Wyatt.”

“Yes…” Chloe made a sound, almost like a sob. “Why? Why Ella?”

“Pierce pressed his lips together into a thin line and rolled his eyes in annoyance. “I was trying to kill Wyatt.”

“I believed everything you said—”

“I do love you,” Pierce snarled into the phone. “Everything I’ve done, everyone I’ve killed is because I love you.”

In his mind’s eye, he saw her eyes narrow, her face became a blank mask as she pressed her lips together. “Then turn yourself in.”

“Not going to happen,” he hissed, feeling a chuckle in the center of his chest. “I’m at the loft. Trust me when I say that you don’t want me coming to you.”

Pierce hung up the phone and then dropped it the floor before giving it a hard stomp. The poked at the shattered case with the toe of his shoe before giving kicking it across the room. Briefly, he touched the demon blade secured at his hip and double checked his sidearm before glancing over his shoulder at Jasper. “Get ready.”

 

*******

 

As he predicted, they arrived at the loft within the hour. Chloe charged ahead, hands wrapped securely around her sidearm, with the devil hot on her heels. She was dressed almost exactly as he imagined, but her lips and chin were chaffed by Lucifer’s stubble. Pierce bit back a snarl at the sight, but then reminded himself that in a few moments, it wouldn't matter. The devil strode behind her, dressed in usual attire, but his entire demeanor had changed.  Gone was his foppish playfulness, replaced with cold, hard fury. Pierce’s arm throbbed, all pins and needles. Something was happening.

The gun was in his hand before he could think, and he fired, striking Lucifer in the right shoulder. Chloe dove for cover behind one of the remaining columns, her gun clasped in both hands and pointed at the ceiling. She edged sideways, eyes wide with horror at the realization that Lucifer had not moved. “Lucifer!”

Smirking, Pierce fired again, this time hitting Lucifer square in the chest. The devil staggered, but didn’t fall, and instead stared up at him with the cold, pitiless gaze of the warden of the damned.

“You know you can’t outrun what you’ve done,” the devil hissed as flames began to lick at his collar. He took a step forward, the flesh of his skull cracking and peeling away. “You know you’re a monster.”

Pierce fired again and again as he scrambled back up the stairs. _This is impossible,_ he thought as he pulled the trigger until he emptied the entire clip. With Chloe so near, Lucifer should have been mortal, vulnerable, not this implacable figure of seething rage.

He squeezed the trigger, knowing the gun was empty and stared down at Lucifer now standing halfway up the stairs. A shimmer of heat surrounded the devil, scorching the nearby walls and stairs. Pierce’s heart thudded in his chest as he stared over the devil's shoulder to see Chloe slip from behind the column.

“It’s over Pierce,” she yelled, but didn’t fire, and grunted in frustration. Lucifer was blocking her shot. “Put down your weapon.”

Pierce paused for a moment, eyes softening when he stared down at her. Gaze never leaving hers, he watched her swallow hard and then inch forward in search of a clear line of sight. He knew from experience that he and Chloe were far more alike than she would ever admit. It was one of the reasons why she was so easy to manipulate and why she was able to manipulate him in return. They would both kill the protect their happiness. Slowly, he lowered the empty gun and tossed it over the railing. He watched her sigh in relief, ever so slightly letting her guard down. Such a rookie mistake.

A low gravely chuckle spilled from his lips as he turned and bolted up the stairs toward the door that led to the roof. Without looking behind, him, he knew that knew that Chloe was bounding up the stairs after him.

He threw himself into a corner, scrambling for cover when she fired three shots at him in quick succession. Quickly glancing through the gap in the stairs, he saw Lucifer peering back at him. A slight smile curled at the devil’s lips, cracking the flesh of his charred cheeks.

Lucifer reached into his jacket and pulled out his flask. Unscrewing the cap with one scalded red hand, he brought it to his lips and took a sip.  

“There’s always been a way out, Piercey,” Lucifer spat, the words seeming sear into Pierce’s soul. “But you know this is where you belong.”

Pierce swallowed hard, trying to dismiss Lucifer’s words, but it was impossible. They sang through his soul like a macabre melody, echoing at last into the words the devil had spoken to him once before.

_And you belong in Hell._

Finally, he reached the top of the stairs and dove for cover when a shot rang out. The bullet went wide, striking a nearby column just inches from his head. Below him, Lucifer screwed the cap back on his flask and then slid it back into his pocket. He took a moment to fuss with his cufflinks before he began moving up the stairs with a slow unhurried grace.

Chloe shouted, demanding once again that surrender, but he ignored her and instead bolted toward the rooftop door. All he had to do to trigger the explosives was shove open the door.

He stopped a foot from his target, smirking as he raised his hands in surrender, but did not turn around. Patiently, he waited until he caught the first whiff of her perfume. It was lavender with the faintest hint of vanilla. Warm and pleasant, if a bit too old for her. He had noted the scent at the concert, and then its absence after their first night together. At the time, he had assumed that much like the necklace, the perfume had been a gift from Lucifer. He inhaled sharply, frowning at the scent of ash beneath the notes of vanilla and lavender, and knew he had been correct.

“I love you,” Pierce said again and stared hard at the explosive-rigged door. It was the truth. He loved Chloe Decker, more than she had ever loved him, but not more than he loved life.

Something shrieked in a panicked, desperate voice, reminding him that he could end this all if he simply opened the door. Perhaps the explosives would kill him or perhaps he would simply revive in a few days as he had before. Either way, this would be done. More importantly, while it was possible that he might survive the explosion, the same was not true of Chloe. Her death would utterly destroy Lucifer in every way that mattered.

He lunged forward but just froze just as his fingertips brushed the handle of the door. The pleading voice deep within mind fell silent as he slowly drew the demon blade from his belt. If he were to open the door, he would escape through death or some other reprieve, but what if he didn’t? It was too great a risk.

Pulling the blade up in an arch, he slowly pivoted on his heel and found himself face to face with the devil himself. An involuntary gasp escaped his lungs as he backpedaled just enough so that could lash out with the blade. It grazed Lucifer’s shoulder, causing more damage to his suit than the flesh beneath. Lucifer hissed, gingerly touching the wound and then chuckled softly beneath his breath. The paint on the walls began to bubble and peel as the heat shimmered around him grew, revealing the gray-black stone beneath. Pierce lunged again, aiming for Lucifer’s chest, his hands twisted around the demon blade in a white-knuckle grip. The blade came down but stopped an inch from the devil’s heart. Pierce blinked in surprise, and then growled at the rough red fingers wrapped around his wrist. He tried to jerk free, but he may as well have been trying to move one of the basalt pillars now littering the room.

Lucifer twisted Pierce’s wrist, snapping it as if it were a twig, and then plunged the dagger deep into his chest. Confused, Pierce stared dumbly down at the blade and slowly fell to his knees. As his blood poured into a pool beneath him, he clutched at the blade and looked with naked desperation to the place he had last seen Chloe.  There was no sign of her. She had simply vanished. 

“Chloe,” he gasped as he fell sideways to lay in a near fetal position on his side. “Is she okay?”

Lucifer dropped to a squat, tugging at his trousers so not to tear them. His face shifted back to his normal face, and then began to wither, turning a sickly gray. He puckered his cracked lips and blew out a stream of ash.  

“Yes,” he hissed, his voice like a hiss of steam, and peeled back his lips to reveal perfect obsidian teeth. “No thanks to you.”

Pierce choked, swallowed back the blood, ash, and bile gathering at the back of his throat. A chuckle slipped past his lips, growing in strength as stared up into eyes the color of ash. His arm ached, worse than the blade in his chest. The mark was coming back. He was coming back.

He stared up at the ceiling, blinking at the damaged skylight. It was raining ash. Suddenly, he was lifted off the floor, back bowing, as someone jerked the demon blade from his chest. Ash and darkness ate away at his vision until all he could make out was the outline of ratty jeans. 

“She will always be safe from you…boss.”

  
********

Across town, Avery Wyatt sat at her regular table at the nightclub known as The Archangel. She glanced down at her phone and smirked at the message from her subordinate. “So, he didn’t fuck it up, after all.”

Yawning into the back of her hand, she began to type a reply when the darkened club was suddenly filled with blue-white light.

Wyatt winced, shielding her eyes from the glare, and waited for the light to fade before she looked up.

“So dramatic,” she murmured with a wry chuckle, and then set down her phone so that she could address her angelic visitor. “Greetings, my lady. I trust all was to your satisfaction?”

The angel scowled, narrowing her blue eyes to a squint, and pressed her lips together into a thin line. She was young, still in her teens, but carried herself with timeless easy grace. A grace that was somewhat at odds with the agitated twitch of her pure white wings.

“Hardly,” the angel fumed, shaking her dark curls from her shoulders. “Cain very nearly escaped.”

“Very nearly,” Wyatt repeated, breathing a sigh, and then gestured with a long, clawed hand to the nearest chair. “And yet, his loop has been reset and his torment will continue.”

The angel rolled her shoulders, folding her wings into themselves, and sat down in a huff. “Your friend gave him far too many clues.”

“Jasper is not my friend,” Wyatt began in a tone that was a strange blend of reverence and mocking. “While it is true that this reiteration of his punishment was purposely slanted in his favor, I assure you he had little chance of escape. In truth, I'm a bit surprised how the loop cycled this time around. Usually, he follows me from the grocery store and we have all sorts of fun before his inevitable defeat.”

The angel glared, her bright blue eyes narrowing. She had a tiny cleft in her pointed chin and lush, full lips that would have been considered pouty had she not been thoroughly incensed. “Little is more than none.”

“Indeed, my lady,” Wyatt hummed and smiled widely, revealing the tips of dainty fangs. “Which is why there is a full battalion of rather surly Lilim with very sharp knives stationed right outside his cell.”

“And if he eluded them?” the angel snapped before settling back into her chair. She leaned an elbow against the armrest and pressed her fist against her mouth. “Or defeated them somehow?”

“Unlike Mazikeen who is merely a whiny lush,” Wyatt tutted, her tone was pleasant, but there was an obvious undercurrent of distaste. “These Lilim are both competent and intelligent, and thus unlikely to be outwitted by a single damned soul. Still, in the event of a mishap, I had the ward sealed.” Her voice dropped into a low, soothing tone, but the barest hint of anger remained. “Even if Cain were to defeat them, he would find himself with no place to go other than another far worse cell.”

“I see Maze is still your favorite person,” the angel said dryly as she rolled her eyes. “Still plotting her death?”

“Mazikeen has betrayed her vow to our Lord,” Wyatt stated as if passing a sentence. She paused, softening, and smiled up at the waiter when he set down two fruity drinks on the table. “Thank you, Jett.”

Jett smiled and nodded, bowing his head briefly to the angel before returning to the bar.

Wyatt plucked the straw from her drink and held it aloft like a dagger. “Angels are forgiving creatures by nature, so it is no surprise that our Lord forgave Mazikeen. We, however, have not.”

She brought the straw down and stabbed viciously into the blue ice of her drink. “Rest assured that she will beg for death before we are done with her.”

“Right,” the angel mouthed rather than said, and then tipped her head back to stare at the angel wing mural adorning the ceiling. “Just when I had forgotten you were a demon.”

“No, you didn’t,” Wyatt said and took a sip of her drink. “But worry not, my lady. Out of respect for our Lord, we will not hunt her outside the confines of hell.”

“I wouldn’t shed a tear if you kneecapped her in the real world,” the angel muttered, and then pinched the bridge of her nose. “I want his cell door chained.”

“Simple enough,” Wyatt agreed and tapped a clawed finger to her chin. “It will be done before the next rotation.”

Quietly fuming, the angel rose from her chair and walked to the center of the dancefloor. “This place needs a piano.”

“Perhaps,” Wyatt agreed offhandedly and watched the angel pace around the room. “Might I assume from the recent security inquiries, that negotiations are going smoothly?”

The angel stopped in mid-step and visibly sagged before turning back to face Wyatt. She reached up to touch the bullet pendant dangling between her breasts, an anxious look on her face. “I hope so.”

Wyatt smiled softly, nodding in approval. “As do I, my lady.”

 

********

Pierce bolted awake, his hand grasping at his chest.

“Hey, hey, easy there, boss,” Jasper coaxed from the corner of the room. He set his laptop aside and crawled across the dirty to the floor to sit beside Pierce. “I just barely managed to get you out.”

“Where are we?” Pierce asked, blinking the sleep from eyes as he looked around. They seemed to be in some sort of warehouse.

“Our Malibu safehouse,” Jasper answered and began fishing around in his pocket. “Which sounds far more glamorous than it actually is.”

He pulled out a small red stone and handed it to Pierce. “Looks like you’ll have to rebuild your collection.”

Jasper watched in quiet fascination as Pierce began to roll the rock over his knuckles. “Anyway, now that you’re up,” he said and reached backward for his laptop. “We can get to work on your exit strategy.”

Pressing his lips together, he tapped at his keyboard with one bony finger before making a pleased sound. “Okay, here we go. “Austin or Philadelphia? Both are doable within the next twenty-four hours. I can arrange others, but those are our best bets.”

“We’re not leaving,” Pierce hissed, staring at the mark blazing against his skin. It had returned, somehow. “I few things to settle first.”

Jasper shrugged and pulled a cigarette out of his front pocket. “Whatever you say, boss,” he mused with a sideways grin. “It's not my ass the devil wants to turn into a hat.”

 

Outside the safe house, pale gray ash began to rain from the sky as two huge misshapen creatures began to bind the door with chains.

 

****fin****


End file.
